


The Book of Bithiah

by Raphaela_Crowley



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Drama, Aziraphale is Drunk For The First Time, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Bible, Birds, Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Has Long Hair (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Crowley's Name is Crawly | Crawley (Good Omens), Dark Comedy, Demon/Human Relationships, Drunk Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fantasy, Fish, Gen, Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hastur Being an Asshole (Good Omens), Heaven & Hell, Lonely Aziraphale (Good Omens), Loss, Nephilim, No Romance, No Slash, Noah's Ark, Original Character(s), Protective Crowley, Rainbows, Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Unicorns, Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25562080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/Raphaela_Crowley
Summary: In pre-flooded Mesopotamia, Crawly rescues a drowning child and unwittingly sets off a chain of unexpected events, resulting in him working in Hastur's household. As the world grows more violent and evil each day, filled with demons and Nephilim, the infamous flood draws ever-nearer...only nobody except Noah's family and one very fussy angel are taking any note...
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Hastur (Good Omens), Hastur & Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43
Collections: Beautiful and Stunning Good Omens Fics





	1. Part 1 of 6

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3Skydream3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3Skydream3/gifts).



_The Book of Bithiah_

A _Good Omens_ fanfiction

Part **1** of **6**

_Mesopotamia, 3054 B.C._

Spotting a yellow flower further afield, Aziraphale hoisted the satchel he was carrying higher onto his right shoulder and walked towards it. He was meant to be meeting Gabriel here in this wide field – just a short ways off from the marketplace – but the archangel was running late. The principality sighed and bent over to pick the flower. Normally, Aziraphale – although he liked them well enough – didn't pay plants, or vegetation in general, much attention. Except, something about this flower was special. He'd never seen one like it before – with its luminous yellow petals and rich wintergreen leaves so dark in hue they looked almost black, even out here unprotected in the blazing sunlight. It reminded him of something _nice_ , though he couldn't for the life of him have said _what_ exactly if anyone had been there to ask him. Furthermore, the Almighty had put a curse on the ground, after Adam and Eve got into that nasty spot of trouble over the apple tree. Plants grew, of course, but not easily. And for a flower this beautiful to grow all alone in a prickly old field people probably trudged through every day, that no one in particular could have cultivated, was a little miracle.

Being an angel, Aziraphale _liked_ miracles.

He put the flower in the satchel, then – suddenly feeling peckish – opened the mouth of the bag a bit wider and pulled out a hunk of bread he'd bought at the marketplace before making his way here to wait for Gabriel. He'd been as quick about doing this as possible – though he'd like to have lingered and picked from the best of the breads and pastries offered there, things were...well...getting rather bad as of late...

Demons had been cropping up all over the bloody place. It had only been the _one_ before, and Aziraphale hadn't minded _him_ so much – Crawly was all right, really. But lately other demons had been showing up on earth and staying put. Some of them had houses up here now, as if to show they had no intention of returning to Hell anytime soon. Aziraphale was having rather a tricky time avoiding them. Let alone _thwarting_ them like he was _supposed_ to be doing. He wondered if Crawly, who largely kept to himself, had been going easy on him in that department – even if the thought was a little ridiculous – and if it had, perhaps, made him a bit soft.

Aziraphale broke the bread into two pieces, inhaling the steam from the middle with an involuntary smile of pleasure. Still nice and hot on the inside, then. He'd almost brought the corner of one piece to his mouth when he heard a twig snap behind him.

Hastily, he shoved both halves back into the satchel. Gabriel didn't understand his love of eating; he'd best save it for later.

" _Hello_?" he called, turning around and letting the satchel's strap drop down towards his wrist. "Gabriel?"

There was a rustling noise (a small animal nearby, perhaps?) and then a _yank_ and _jingle-jangle_ sound as the satchel was ripped away from Aziraphale and a tiny, bedraggled thief was running out of the field like it was on fire.

"I _say_!" Aziraphale called irately after the fleet-footed little human. "Get back here and return my property at once! That is extremely rude!"

Before he could take off after the impertinent little thing, he heard a light cough and his name pronounced in a tone of deep annoyance and impatience.

It wasn't Gabriel – who apparently had been detained elsewhere – but rather Uriel and the Metatron (it was the Metatron who'd coughed and spoken his name).

"We have much to discuss with you, Aziraphale," he said, very dryly.

"Things," added Uriel, "have been going very, very wrong down here."

Aziraphale nodded, grimacing. "Ah. Yes. I've noticed."

"They are only going to get worse," the Metatron told him.

It was not a prediction, nor a promise; merely spoken, clearly enunciated _fact_. Which somehow made it all so much worse.

* * *

The demon Crawly was sitting by a stream, watching a lone duck swim around in circles self-importantly.

On the other side of the stream, there arrived a little child – a female, he thought, of about three years – dressed in rags and dragging a satchel behind her. She plopped down near the muddy bank, waggled her dirty feet, and – stuffing her hand into the satchel – pulled out two pieces of bread. She crammed them both into her mouth. She didn't see Crawly at first. She was too busy rummaging through the satchel to look for any other crumbs of food.

When she, rather despondently, looked up again, she spotted the demon. Her eyes widened and – attempting to get up, either for a closer look or to run away – she skittered downwards into the slippery mud.

The girl landed in the water with a splash and did not resurface.

Crawly jumped in after her. He wasn't really supposed to rescue humans – his job was making their increasingly short (Methuselah was a fluke, just look at Enoch) lives miserable. Still, it was only a _kid_. And, well, it would _drown_ if he didn't save it... So long as nobody found out – a tricky business with all the extra demons surfacing as of late, but not impossible – everything would be fine. He would have lengthened into a snake, so he could always claim it was just some animal that rescued the drowning child, nothing to do with _him_ , but serpents didn't have arms and he didn't want to squeeze the life out of the – doubtless already quite waterlogged – child by accident in an attempt to lift her up while coiled around her.

It took the demon a few moments to find the child in the murky, choppy water. When he finally did, he grabbed her and dragged her back up, depositing her on the bank again, right beside the satchel.

For an awful second, he thought the unmoving child might be dead, then it turned and coughed up a mouthful of water before crawling back towards the satchel.

Crawly turned to go, performing a demonic miracle to dry his clothes and hair, when he felt a pull at his side.

The child had tugged on his garment.

"Yeah, what d'you want?" He sniffed and turned halfway.

The child held out a (slightly crumpled) yellow flower she'd found in the satchel.

"For me?" Crawly's brow raised in surprise.

She nodded, straining to hold it up a little higher so he could take it.

He crouched slightly and took it. "Should I say thank you?"

The child didn't respond, scurrying – careful not to fall again – back over to the satchel.

As he walked away, Crawly twirled the flower's stem between his long fingers.

* * *

_Mesopotamia, 3039 B.C._

"One," Crawly counted, pointing to an occupied wooden cradle on the other side of the room. "Two, three." He gestured at a pair of enormous toddlers wresting on the rug. An unnervingly deep scream came from behind the nearest furnishings. _That_ baby, he knew, was currently in possession of a red curl he'd viciously ripped out from his – actually still-bleeding – scalp half an hour ago. "Four." The demon stopped, his sticky forehead creased in frustration. "Ugggh. Not _again_! We're missing at least _two_. I'm almost certain of it." Groaning, he rushed out of the room, kicking open the door. " _Asmodeus_! Where the Heaven is Beelzebub's third baby? Don't mean to pressure you or anything – just a friendly reminder that Duke Hastur threatened to _discorporate me extraordinarily painfully_ if we lost another one."

"I don't _know_!" snarled Asmodeus, angrily flinging a frilly cushion at Crawly's head – which the demon caught before it could hit his face. "And I don't _care_. I've been bitten, kicked, punched, and defecated on twice in the last hour. Not to mention, I've had two primary feathers ripped from my wings."

" _What'd you expect?_ Nobody told you to open your wings in front of the hell-spawn! That's safety rule number one around here – _don't_ open your wings in front of the babies!"

"I _just_ ," moaned Asmodeus, near tears, "want _five bloody minutes_ to myself!"

"Well, what in celestial blazes am I meant to do? I never asked for this."

"You're the one who loves kids so damn much."

"For Satan's sake," Crawly exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch, "I rescued _one_ stupid child from drowning – next thing you know word's out and I'm running a nursery of novelty oversized babies."

" _Cra-wee_!" bawled a voice from the room behind him.

"Just a minute, dear!" he called over his shoulder. "Uncle Crawly's having a grown-up conversation." He shuddered, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. "I'm a little afraid to go back in there at this point, truth be told."

The door flung open unaided and Hastur and Ligur themselves marched in, grinning broadly.

Ligur folded his arms across his chest. "And how are the little Nephilim doing today?"

" _Great_ ," said Crawly through his teeth. "They're getting bigger every day." That much, at least, was perfectly true.

"Are they strong?"

"Exceptionally." He bent his head forward to show them where his hair had been ripped out.

Ligur was unimpressed. "Killed anyone yet?"

"Uh, no, not just yet – but there's more to being evil than just killing." He forced a laugh. "The oldest one is only two, after all."

"Excuses, excuses," muttered Hastur. "It's always _something_ with you, isn't it, Crawly?"

"Well, I mean, if you lot want to raise your own children be my guest, but according to records downstairs, I've done–"

"Absolutely nothing," finished Hastur.

Ligur snickered.

"Guys, come on, I've–"

"And how many Nephilim have you fathered?"

He winced, tossing aside the cushion he still held. "Well, none, but–"

"Like we've got the time," snapped Asmodeus. "Taking care of these bellowing giants all day and night."

"You don't have to work with the children if you're willing to do your demonic duty elsewhere."

"So," said Asmodeus, very slowly, as if trying to be sure he'd got it right, "what you're saying is if we fuck human females we don't have to stay here and look after the babies any longer?"

"That's right," Ligur told him.

"Look, thanks for the offer," Crawly began, "but Asmodeus and I..." He stopped, realising – apart from Ligur, Hastur, and the still-screaming babies in the room behind him – he was now alone. "Asmodeus?" _Damn_. "Right... Okay. Demon of lust. Really should have seen that one coming."

"Of course, if you want a day off from the nursery," Hastur added, as if he and Ligur had been speaking only to Crawly the entire time, "and you won't do what the rest of us are doing, I have a little job I need taken care of tomorrow."

Crawly liked children, but half a dozen giant babies in succession were simply _too much_. Just the other day, with no help to speak of from Asmodeus, he'd attempted to bundle them up in the cart and take them to the marketplace for a little fresh air – it hadn't gone well.

Long story short, they no longer _had_ a cart. Just rather a lot of broken wooden planks.

" _Crah-weeee_!"

His raw scalp felt like it was pulsing in anticipation of what awaited him. "Right, then." He caved. "What's the job?"

* * *

"Is she coming or isn't she?" asked a girl in a long purple garment comprised of multiple pieces, whose companions were fastening tiny pearls into her dark, braided hair.

One of her companions shook their head. "No, Bithiah. I spoke to her only yesterday – she says what you're doing is wrong. _Bad_. Her words, not mine."

Bithiah scrunched her nose. "Ever since she married Japheth, she's been really stuck up. I mean, we can't _all_ wed sons of prophets."

Another companion, slightly older and deeper-voiced, scoffed, "Please, _Noah_? A prophet?" She tossed her head indignantly. "That's a joke – everyone laughs at him, you know. His father Lamech said he'd bring us comfort – relief from the pain of toiling upon the cursed ground – but Noah's never said anything positive in his life!"

Bithiah waved it off. "Anyway, my point is, she ought to be _glad_ for me – demons are of angelic stock, after all. I'm practically wedding a son of God."

A trumpet sounded and several of Bithiah's companions squealed with excitement. "He's here! They're ready to begin!"

And, in a flurry of swishing fabric and giggles, the little bridal party made its way across a meadow and into the golden-draped pavilion that had been set up overlooking the marketplace.

Half the selling had been stopped early, vendors closing especially for the occasion, and camels and horses were being herded over, along with several men in fine robes bearing gifts wrapped in silvery crushed velvet.

Given that she was being elevated from belonging to one of the poorest local families to something as grand as this, Bithiah was ecstatic. Until she noticed the tall, red-haired figure waiting to meet her. He looked absolutely nothing like her husband to be.

"You're not Hastur!"

He quirked a gingery eyebrow. "You're observant."

"What's all this? Who the hell _are_ you?"

"Oh, right." He rolled his shoulders back. " _About_ that. Hastur's busy with something – he's sent me in his place."

"I'm supposed to be Hastur's wife, not _yours_." Her lips twisted into an expression of furious disdain, perhaps to mask her disappointment. " _No_." She looked him up and down. "Just no."

" _Oi_!" He seemed slightly offended. "You could do worse."

" _Hastur_ is a duke of Hell!" she spluttered. "You're probably some sort of underling minion at best. I was supposed to be a _duchess_!"

"Don't worry – you're still marrying Hastur." He rolled his yellow eyes. "I'm just the proxy."

"So I still get to be a duchess?" This, apparently, was very important to her, and if it was her only takeaway from the whole deal, she would probably have been contented enough. "And live in Hastur's big house and have servants?"

"Yeah, apparently you do."

"I don't have to go back home to my father – or live in some muddy hut with _you_ somewhere?"

"No, _I_ don't want you." He leaned in closer. "And for the record, I do _not_ live in a hut. Muddy or any other kind."

She inhaled deeply, pulling back. "Oh. _Good_. That's all right, then." Her expression of distaste and fear untwisted and she looked much prettier for it. "I'm Bithiah, by the way."

"Crawly."

"Charmed, I'm sure." She stared at him for a moment. "Say, have we met before?"

"Don't think so."

"You look strangely familiar, now that I'm really thinking about it."

"I've got one of those faces." He glanced over his shoulder at the shadows moving behind the pavilion. "Now, if you've got all your wedding jitters sorted, could we get started? It's already midday."

"Oh, yes, at once!" she gasped fawningly. "Forgive me for delaying it with my questions – I just had to be _sure_ , you understand. I went through a lot to get here."

"Of course." He offered her his arm, and she took it, allowing him to escort her. " _Smile_. This is the fun part – we get to put on a _show_."

* * *

Aziraphale was hurrying through the marketplace, struggling to avoid being jostled; if he'd known there was one of those demonic marriage ceremonies going on, he'd have delayed his visit until another day. After all, peckish or not, he didn't need to eat to survive, not like humans did, and he hated having to witness the unnatural spectacle.

It turned the stomach, no mistake.

The worst part was how many people had begun to act like it was perfectly _normal_. Even desirable. No one talked about the fact that these were literal demons – a completely different species, and evil to boot – marrying women, sometimes for only a few months before putting them aside to take another wife, and laughing in the face of God. No one talked about how these same demons were demanding large amounts of tribute from everyone – including poor farmers and exhausted carpenters who could barely manage to make ends meet. Instead, they mocked anyone who refused to support these hellish beings – after all, these demons, wicked though they might be, were famous. The stories about them were fascinating. And human beings loved a good story above all else.

Rumour had it that many of these unions were already resulting in monstrous children that were being raised somewhere to be as wicked as their fathers – if not more so.

The Metatron and Uriel had warned him things were going to get bad, and they had not been vague, but somehow Aziraphale hadn't quite pictured _this_. He hadn't imagined humans _supporting_ the demons, supporting outright evil, speaking of them and their wicked wiles in awed whispers, some of the delusional women even with _envy_.

Sometimes, Aziraphale wondered whatever had become of dear old Crawly – that, comparatively, almost _nice_ demon who had been his only adversary until the others turned up.

He hadn't seen him, even from a distance, in nearly a decade.

Surely he wasn't doing what the others were. Crawly wasn't like that. He tempted people – which was very bad, naturally – but he didn't strike Aziraphale as _perverse_.

The angel happened to glance up at the pavilion. The poor bride looked so happy. She was quite young, this one, perhaps eighteen. What a foolish, fatal choice she was making – though, there was always the chance she scarcely _had_ one. Some went more willingly than others. What would the demons do if one of them said no? It didn't bear thinking of.

That was when Aziraphale recognised the finely-dressed demon standing beside her upon a makeshift dais. " _Crawly_." Although he knew he shouldn't be so surprised, the principality was bitterly disappointed. He'd thought far better of him. Perhaps he'd been as foolish as anyone else in all this, assuming Crawly was different from the other demons.

"Ladies and gentleman." Crawly was holding up the young bride's hand. "I present to you all gathered here this fine day, Bithiah, Duchess of Hell!"

Ah, so Crawly had also been promoted; apparently, he was now a duke of Hell. So that was where he'd been all this time, then. What ghastly thing had he done to _achieve_ that promotion? A high rank like that didn't come easily – the angel had only heard of two other dukes of Hell before; it wasn't a gift Satan gave away for _nothing_.

Shuffling further along the now cheering crowd, Aziraphale shook his head and awkwardly passed his satchel of baked goods and grain supplies from one hand to the other, fidgeting miserably.

* * *

After sunset, Crawly lifted Bithiah onto the back of a camel and took an anxious step back. Animals – apart from the occasional benign duck or clever rat – tended not to _like_ him very much. Not to mention, he'd been stepped on and drooled over enough times by giant monster babies in the last few days – he didn't need ill-tempered camels getting in on the action, too.

"Is this it, then?" asked Bithiah, looking back at him. "You're just going to _leave_ me? I don't know the way."

"The camel knows the way," Crawly told her. "He'll take you home."

"You _said_ I didn't–"

" _Hastur's_ house. That's your home. You live there now, remember?"

"Oh. Yes. How stupid of me. Yes, Hastur's house. My home." She spoke as if she were tasting the words on her tongue for the first time. "It's all going to be rather lovely." She straightened herself and reached for the reigns, not so much to direct the beast as for something to do with her shaking hands. "Thank you, Crawly, for everything – you were wonderful."

"Best of luck." Crawly turned away. In a softer voice, he added, as he heard the camel's tread growing distant behind him, "Will _she_ ever need it."

* * *

Hastur must have been pleased with Bithiah, because he gave her leave to throw an elaborate outdoor feast near his property and invite anyone she wanted.

This didn't surprise Crawly – Bithiah struck him as somebody good at getting her own way. She might wear even Hastur down and do pretty well for herself for a couple years, if she was clever enough to know when not to push it (he wouldn't put it past Hastur to get angry with her and make her swallow her own tongue if she got too mouthy). He wasn't surprised, either, that she invited all the locals; obviously she wanted to show off.

What _did_ surprise Crawly was how she tapped Hastur on the shoulder and pointed over at him when he arrived.

For a moment, the demon thought he was in trouble for something, and began looking about the crowd for a quick way out, but in actuality Hastur just had another job offer for him.

"You want me to move into your house and..." Here Crawly paused, looking a bit confused. "And _what_ exactly? Just follow Bithiah around?"

"I promised her she could have a demonic attendant." His inky eyes blinked twice. "She picked you. Besides, she needs to be escorted whenever she leaves the house; better another demon – even a flash bastard like you – than some human I can't trust."

"Are you saying you _trust_ me?" Crawly was amazed.

"No," snarled Hastur. "Of course I don't trust you, you little runt! But obviously you made some kind of impression, and I know you'll take the job; that's good enough for right now."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you keep taking care of the babies."

"Oh." Hardly an appealing prospect. "Uh... For how long?"

"Until they're forty-five."

"You know what?" Crawly decided, choosing what he hoped was the lesser of two evils, coin toss though it was. "I'd be _delighted_ to move in with you, Duke Hastur – just a few things to pack. I'll be there first thing in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."

"Bushy tailed?" Hastur gave him a darkly bemused look. "What... What's that mean, bushy-tailed?"

"That was a joke," Crawly said flatly.

"I don't _like_ jokes."

"Right. Noted."

"Good." With that, Hastur turned and joined Ligur on the other side of the spacious lawn.

Crawly got himself a goblet of fine wine and thought he might actually manage to enjoy himself, despite the place swarming with Hell's higher-ups, when he felt something kick him lightly in the backside.

"Oi! Watch it!" He whirled around, finding himself face to face with a laughing Bithiah, wearing enough gold jewellery to add an extra fifty pounds to her willowy frame. "Oh, it's you."

"Hastur has given you the news?"

"Yup." He glowered.

She stared at him, her expression falling. "I thought you'd be pleased."

" _Pleased_?" he scoffed. "That I have to move in with Hastur and wait on you? I spend most of my time trying to _avoid_ Hastur – this puts a bit of a damper on that, you know."

"Well, honestly, Crawly!" Her hands were on her hips. "I was only trying to do something _nice_ for you – put in a good word for you, seeing as I'm the duchess of Hell now."

"Better enjoy it while you can."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, this isn't a permanent position – don't get too comfortable. Have your fun and try not to get stabbed in the back while you're at it. And don't try to take anything valuable from the house when it's over – not even personal jewels – they _really_ don't like that."

She blanched. "You think he's going to set me aside?"

"Oh, I _know_ he's going to set you aside eventually." Crawly pointed over at a group of demons – dancing badly – a few feet away. "See that lot? They've got bets going on how long you'll last."

"We shall see." She swallowed, took in a deep breath, then posed another question. "Now. Something's been puzzling me, Crawly, perhaps you can help clarify the matter?"

"What is it?"

"Hastur and Ligur – why are they always together?"

"Oh, that." Crawly chuckled. "Well, you know how demons used to be angels?"

"Yes, go on."

"Angels usually have a working partner – someone they're closer to than any of the other angels, their personal second."

"Like a best friend?"

He nodded. "You could call it that, I suppose. Anyway, some of the demons – despite natural demonic distrust of each other – have clung to their seconds even after the fall. Ligur was Hastur's second. They're used to working and conspiring together, so they just kept doing so – convenience, you see."

Bithiah considered this. "That's interesting."

"If you say so."

"It _is_ , though." She began walking the length of the lawn and motioned that Crawly should follow at her side. "I'm fascinated. Tell me, does _God_ have a second?"

"I don't know – we were never on what you'd call speaking terms."

"What about you, then, who's _your_ second?"

Crawly sauntered causally alongside her. "Haven't got one."

"Did you ever?"

"No."

"That's quite sad." Her expression, laced with deep pity, was almost vulnerable. "How _lonely_ you must be! How very lonely." Reaching out, she placed a hand on his arm. "Poor Crawly."

Crawly made a motion to brush it off, then noticed – because, being a demon, he could see perfectly well in the dark – that her sleeve had bunched up and rolled back slightly, revealing a rising trail of dark bruises. He realised, then, also, that the garment she was wearing – although clearly expensive and grand – had a much higher neckline than the one she'd worn to the ceremony where he'd proclaimed her Duchess of Hell in Hastur's place.

Ignore _it_ , he told himself, _it isn't any of your business._

* * *

Crawly managed to slip away from the feast (it was getting rather wild, even for his taste) with a jug of wine tucked under his arm (he'd long since emptied his original goblet, set it down somewhere, and lost track of it). He made his way into a natural alcove with a large pond sheltered by knobby trees. It was close enough to the feast that he could be back again in a hurry if his absence was noticed, yet far away enough he couldn't hear the music and drunken screaming.

The place was tranquil, quiet, lonely. Indeed, Crawly expected to be entirely alone here. Except that he wasn't. A familiar angel was there, wings out and messy, his bare feet dangling in the water.

Aziraphale looked very white against the dark trees and blue-black colouring of the grass and reeds at night. He seemed almost to _glow_.

The pond itself was also glowing in the darkness, but in more of a greenish-blue hue.

"Are _you_ doing that?" Crawly blurted.

Aziraphale started. "Who's there?"

"Relax, Aziraphale, it's just me."

"Oh, Crawly. Hello." He sounded stiff and did not quite _look_ at the demon as he approached, now that he'd confirmed it was him. "No – it's not _me_ – the water does that on its own. Something to do with bioluminescence or reflections...algae or what-not..." He paused, glanced up at the sky, then back down at the water again. "Er. I _think_."

"Mind if I join you?" Crawly lifted the wine jug.

"I don't think that would be a good idea." Aziraphale began to stand up, drawing in his wings.

For a split-second, Aziraphale's raised eyes met his and Crawly was stunned to see something there he hadn't expected. "Wait, hold up. Are you _angry_ with me?"

"Why should I be angry with you?" The wounded tone did not match the blithe words. "You're just a demon, doing what demons do. In your nature, what."

"What the Heaven are you on about?" demanded Crawly.

"It's just..." Aziraphale sighed, closing his eyes. "What you're doing is _wrong_."

Crawly frowned in puzzlement. "What am I doing?"

Aziraphale's eyes were open again, and doubly judgemental. "I'm not an _idiot_ , Crawly."

"Clearly _one_ of us must be – what _are_ you talking about?"

"Nothing, nothing at all." The angel picked up a pair of sandals and miracled the mud off the sides before pertly slipping them onto his feet. "What's done is done. I just don't see how any good could possibly come of it. People are going to get _hurt_."

" _I_ ," hissed Crawly, very slowly and emphatically. "Have. No. Idea. What. You're. Talking. _About_."

"Congratulations on the promotion are in order, I suppose," Aziraphale replied icily, staring down at his feet.

"I see word travels fast." Crawly's eyes looked particularly snake-like in that moment. "I hardly call moving into Hastur's house as a servant a _promotion_. I mean, glorified babysitter for a grown woman? Not the sort of thing you put on your résumé."

"What? No!" Aziraphale blinked. "I think you and I must be talking about two _different_ things... That is..." He stopped; something wasn't adding up. "But... Why would one duke of Hell be working as a servant for another duke of Hell? Isn't that a bit...er...disorganized?"

"I'm not a duke of hell."

"But you announced your wife as 'Duchess of Hell' in the marketplace the other day."

"Oh, no, no." Crawly shook his head. "Bithiah isn't my wife – she's Hastur's."

"You're not married?"

"No."

Aziraphale's entire demeanour changed. "Oh, thank goodness. I must admit, I feared you were caught up this whole 'fathering demonic children' business I've been hearing about. It's all anyone talks about. And when I saw you in the marketplace, I thought... Well, you can understand what it must have looked like."

"So. You were worried about me?" Crawly smiled teasingly. "Is an angel _supposed_ to be worried about a demon?"

Aziraphale stammered something about common courtesy and concern, nothing to do with the fact that he was a demon or otherwise, while Crawly – feeling rather self-satisfied – watched the angel squirm and go slightly red in the face while he attempted to justify his worry.

After that, Crawly took mercy on him and offered to share the wine again, which Aziraphale accepted this time.

They sat there, side by side, staring at the glittering pond for a while, passing the jug back and forth and taking long swigs, when Aziraphale stood up and took off his sandals again. He waded out into the water. The demon followed, ducking under when the angel did and – not needing to breathe – simply opened his eyes and began moving forward as if he were still walking on the dry shoreline.

A couple of seconds ticked by, then Aziraphale pointed and Crawly saw a group of luminous fish with lacy fins swimming by. Some of them were barely the size of the nail on his little finger, others were as large as his two fists put together. Most were pale blue, but there were also bright golden ones that shown like tiny underwater stars, swimming in amongst their blue companions. A lone green fish swam up to Aziraphale, bumped its head against the angel's knuckles, then swam off again. Crawly's hair floated in his way; he pushed it back and watched the fish for a while longer.

They finally resurfaced, the air above the water much colder than either of them recalled it being, and Aziraphale – not spying Crawly at first – thrashed around searching for the demon.

"Think fast!" The demon popped up in front of him and announced his presence with a splash that sent water up his companion's nose.

Aziraphale slapped his hand across the water, lightly splashing him back. "That wasn't very _nice_ , Crawly!"

"I _said_ think fast," Crawly insisted. "Not m'fault you didn't."

Swimming away from the demon, Aziraphale flopped out of the water and sprawled across the small stretch of bank, staring up drunkenly at the sky. He hiccuped twice, rolled over, and propped himself up on one elbow. "I suppose I'd better sober up and get out of here." His eyes darted anxiously back and forth. "I don't know what my side would say if they found me like this."

Crawly dug a finger into one of his ears, trying to dislodge any excess water. "What'd you mean?"

"Drunk, Crawly, I'm _drunk_."

"Usually what happens when you drink wine."

Aziraphale shivered.

The coin dropped; Crawly realised what the angel _meant_. "Oh. You've... You've never been drunk before, have you?"

He hiccuped again. "There were so _many_ fish under the water... Did you notice, Crawly? So many – great and smoke."

The demon smiled over at him indulgently.

"Great and smo..." The angel tried again, visibly growing frustrated with himself. "Great and _small_. There." He fell into a brooding silence, and when he opened his mouth to speak again – not very coherently – Crawly thought he was going to add something profound, but he only mumbled, "Now, _what_ were we talking about again?"

A twig snapped, loudly.

Aziraphale sat all the way up, squinting into the closet thicket. "Who was that?"

"Probably just a bird," Crawly suggested, despite being unnerved himself.

"Bloody big bird, then."

* * *

Bithiah insisted on taking Crawly on a tour of Hastur's courtyard, even though he'd told her he'd already _seen_ it. She ignored this and, carrying a wicker hamper under one arm, started marching down the stairs in a manner which suggested she expected to be followed immediately.

"Here," she said, theatrically, when they'd reached the paved courtyard, "we have a large statue of a crane singing."

"It's a _fountain_ ," Crawly corrected her, snapping his fingers.

Water came shooting out of the crane's mouth and – rather vulgarly – its ass as well, filling a marble basin situated under its feet.

"How about that." Bithiah nodded approvingly.

"And," he added, growing impatient, "for the third time, I've _seen_ it."

Bithiah glanced over her shoulder. "Good, we seem to be alone."

"You could have just said you needed to talk to me alone – or ordered the servants to leave the room we were sitting in."

"That..." Bithiah was caught off-guard; she began fidgeting with the six or seven silver and gold rings on her fingers. "That never occurred to me."

"So what _is_ it?"

"What's what?"

"What was so bloody important you took us down here to view a ceramic crane having a very watery bowel movement in order to tell me about it?"

She tilted her head at the crane. "Oh, God, you're right – it _does_ look like it's–"

" _Bithiah_!"

"Oh, right. Sorry. I... I just wanted to say your secret is safe with me. But you need to be more _careful_ – someone is bound to find out. I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

"What secret?"

"I _saw_ you, the night of the feast."

"Saw me doing what?"

"That angel – the one you went swimming with – he's your second, isn't he?"

Crawly's mouth fell open and several shocked choking sounds proceeded his, " _Wot_?"

She nodded earnestly. "Like Hastur and Ligur."

"Are you completely _mad_?" laughed Crawly. "Of course Aziraphale isn't my second. I barely know him. He's just some angel I met on the Eastern Gate of Eden."

Bithiah considered this. "Really?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, well, that's not what it looked like – you two interact like you've been together since the dawn of time. I thought perhaps you'd fallen and _he_ didn't and you met him secretly because you missed him and... I'm rambling like a fool now, forget it." Her hands covered her face as she groaned into them self-deprecatingly. "And here I'd thought I'd stumbled onto the greatest of celestial secrets!"

"You were spying on us," Crawly realised. "That's the twig we heard snapping."

"I wouldn't have made a sound, I'm usually very quiet, but being around water makes me nervous and you were awfully close to the pond..." Bithiah explained sheepishly, lowering her hands. "It's irrational, of course – I just don't do well around water." She leaned against the side of the crane, steadying herself against it. "If this basin was much deeper, I'd be panicking right now. I'm terrified of _drowning_."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"I almost drowned when I was really little. Even though I barely remember the incident, it still... I always feel this...panic...when I think of being submerged in water."

Something in the back of Crawly's mind was making frantic alarm sounds. He couldn't figure out _why_ , though, not just then.

"So, what's the hamper for?" he asked. "Are we having a picnic out here?"

"No, that's my sewing."

"What're you sewing for? You've got loads servants to do all the sewing _for_ you." She'd struck the demon as the sort of person who would be very keen to start bossing people around and making them do what she told them – after all, that's how she was with _him_. But, since he'd moved in, he'd seen her busily – and with surprising contentment on her face – sewing almost every time she had a minute free. "What's that about, _sewing_?"

"I... I wouldn't feel like much of a wife if I didn't make garments for my husband's family."

"Hastur won't wear anything you make – mostly demons make clothes just sort of appear over ourselves."

She sat down beside the crane, an expression of pain camping on her face. "I know. Hastur told me yesterday, and none too nicely, either. I just..." Reaching down, she lifted the lid off the hamper and drew out a long, dark garment. "I made one for you as well, if you'd like it." She held it out to him.

"For me?" Crawly took the folded garment from her, overcome with a strange sense of deja-vu.

"You're practically family."

"First I've heard of it." He unrolled one of the sleeves – an elaborate trifecta of layered ebony fabric with a crimson lining – and noticed there was a tiny pattern of yellow near the shoulder. "What's this bit here?"

"I know you only wear black, usually, but you _should_ wear some yellow now and again; it matches your eyes."

That was when it clicked. _Yellow_. A yellow flower. Fear of drowning. Almost drowned when she was little...

" _Shit_!" Crawly tossed the garment back at the hamper and started for the main house, leaving a stunned, offended Bithiah behind.

* * *

"Did you _know_?" Crawly snarled, leaning over the arm of the long, upholstered chair Hastur was lounging on.

Hastur grinned up at him. "Of course I did."

Biting his lower lip, Crawly struggled to regain his composure. "And that's why you picked her?"

Hastur chuckled darkly. "Funny, isn't it? The same child you got reprimanded for rescuing fifteen years ago. All grown up."

" _Hilarious_ ," he growled through his teeth.

"I was originally just going to fuck her, but the pretty little bitch was a lot smarter than I gave her credit for." Hastur sat up and stretched. "Pulled out a knife and said I had to marry her, make her a duchess of Hell."

"You let her pull a knife on you?" He'd seen Hastur reduce people to puddles of molten jelly over less than that.

"Come on, Crawly, you know better than that. She pulled the knife on _herself_ – threatened to slit her own throat if I tried to take her without marrying her first."

"And you thought it would be funny to scare her by sending a proxy in your place."

"Just so she knew which one of us had the upper hand." Hastur's face was rapt with delight; he loved making Crawly uncomfortable. "Guess what the best part is."

"What's the best part?"

"I didn't even have to _plan_ this far – she requested you personally. She actually _likes_ you. Hell only knows why, but she does."

"So how long until you dismiss her from your household?"

"Oh, whenever I grow weary of dangling this situation over your head – or if she doesn't get pregnant fast enough to suit me." He shrugged. "Either way."

Sucking his teeth, swallowing back an angry hiss, Crawly turned to leave the room.

"Crawly." Hastur's hand was suddenly on the wood of the door, holding it closed.

"What?" He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, frightened of any emotion he might actually show – any weakness Hastur would be all too willing to exploit.

"Bet you wish you'd let her drown now, don't you?" His nose almost touched Crawly's, his foul-smelling breath inescapable. "If it hadn't been for her, you'd still be merrily tempting people, free as anything. You'd never have gotten stuck taking care of the Nephilim in the first place. Let alone being a servant in my household. But, now, until further notice, you work for me. Or Ligur, if I happen to be away. Doesn't that just _sting_ so _good_? Isn't it glorious?"

" _Glorious_ ," Crawly echoed, his face impassive as he rebelliously imagined knocking Hastur on the back of the head with a blunt object. "I've got to get back to work. You know me – _keen_."

* * *

_Mesopotamia, 3037 B.C._

"Hello, Aziraphale!"

Aziraphale turned. "Crawly." He peered at him with renewed interest, momentarily distracted. "Oh. I say, that's a _stylish_ garment – is it new? Suits you very well. Especially the sleeves."

"It's not new. A friend made it for me," Crawly said offhandedly, then gestured at the spectacle everyone had come out to watch. "What's all this about? Are they building something?"

There was, evidently, a shortage of demon marriages that week, so this was the next best thing: Noah and his family dragging heavy logs across a squelchy field.

"From what I hear..." Aziraphale said, his voice low, "God's a bit tetchy."

Crawly paused, waiting for more. Of _course_ God was upset – God had been upset for quite a while. God had been upset _before_ all the demons started marrying human women. God had been upset about Abel getting bumped off – not even the demons had seen that one coming, they hadn't thought to tempt him into it, bastard came up with the whole violent murder thing _himself_. Things had been going on this way since Eve ate the apple. God hadn't done anything yet, so Crawly hadn't been expecting that to change.

"Wiping out the human race," Aziraphale finished bleakly, pointing upwards. "Big storm."

"All of them?"

Aziraphale stammered, "Er... Just the locals. I don't believe the Almighty is upset with the Chinese or the Native Americans. Or the Australians."

"Yet," snorted Crawly.

"And God's not actually going to wipe out _all_ the locals." He tried to look bright and cheerful, but the expression did not reach his eyes. "I mean, Noah – that's him out there with the axe – his family, his sons, their wives. They're all going to be _fine_."

" _Eight_ people?" Crawly was utterly disgusted. "Only _eight_ people?" He waved an arm out at just the several dozen watching them. "There are how many people here, and God only wants to save _eight_?" Hastur, grinning like the winner of the world's most amusing game as he assured Crawly he'd known exactly who Bithiah was when he married her, came into his mind. "That's more the sort of thing you'd expect _my_ lot to do."

"It's _quality_ the Almighty wants, Crawly, not quantity." He sighed, pained. "Besides, if you must know, _I_ was not consulted in this matter."

"How much time do we have?"

"Until the ark is built – then God shuts the door and its all over."

"So that's it, then?"

"Anyone who wants to join them can get involved at any time – they'd be fine, in that case."

"No one is going to do that!" exclaimed Crawly, throwing up his hands. "They'd be ridiculed. And what about the kids? You can't kill kids. Even the demons' children – they might be ugly as sin and big and mean, but they didn't ask to be born. The eldest Nephilim is only four years old, d'you realise that?"

" _Ugly as sin_ , you're right about that much," Aziraphale agreed. "Quite literally."

"This isn't fair!"

He'd shouted this exclamation too loudly and one of the locals turned and stared at him.

"Do you mind?" He grunted at them until they turned around and resumed gawking at Noah like they'd never seen a woodsman at work before. "Aziraphale, listen, there has to be some other–"

"Don't you _understand_ , Crawly? It's going to take years – people will have the opportunity to be good. They can prove once and for all what side they're on. And when it's over, God's going to lift the curse from the ground, and put a new thing in the sky called a rain- _bow_."

"Right. What's a rainbow?"

"A promise not to drown everyone again."

"Oh," mocked Crawly. "How _kind_."

"Just... I don't know... Tell as many people as you can – maybe there's still a chance."

"There's _no_ chance, Aziraphale." Crawly watched the jeering, pointing people, then turned his attention back to Noah and his family, diligently chopping up wood like there was no tomorrow – because pretty soon there wouldn't be. " _None_. They're all doomed."

"Well, then. Welcome to the end times."


	2. Part 2 of 6

_The Book of Bithiah_

A _Good Omens_ fanfiction

Part **2** of **6**

_Mesopotamia, 3036 B.C._

"What the Heaven are you wearing _that_ for?" Crawly asked, stepping out onto the terrace overlooking the courtyard.

Bithiah was sitting by the edge with a heavy shawl pulled over her shoulders; she was covered up to her chin and was being unusually quiet.

"It's the middle of summer." Crawly, now at her side, bent over to take it from her. "You'll get heatstroke."

She fumbled, very ineffectually, to stop him pulling the shawl away. "Crawly, don't..." she mumbled, sounding like somebody who was slowly coming back to themselves after their thoughts had taken them miles and miles away until they were quite lost. "Wait... Wait a moment. It's–"

"Shit! That's got to _hurt_."

Her shoulders, arms, and neck were covered in dark bruises, much worse – a great deal more vivid – than the last time. Her wrists and elbows were covered in deep fingernail indentations and scratches. On her left shoulder was what looked like an infected bite with deep teeth marks. When she spread out her hands apologetically, he could see bubbled burns running up the inside of her lower arms. Her bare-shouldered summer garment did little to nothing to cover up these injuries; hence the shawl.

He'd forgotten, of course, that she'd spent all morning alone with Hastur.

"S'not my business," he muttered under his breath, visibly struggling against getting angry. "S'not my business..." He began blessing – still under his breath – quite viciously.

"Don't excite yourself." She shook her head. "It's nothing – you get used to it after a while."

Crawly arched an eyebrow sceptically. "Do you?"

"No," she admitted, turning her head away. "Not really." Motioning at the shawl he was still holding, she added, "I'll have that back now, if you don't mind."

Wincing, he handed it back and sat down across from her. "You know, I can't make him stop, but I _could_ make it so you forget it happened – make you remember it all differently – if you want."

She shifted, shivering and pulling the shawl tighter around her despite the heat. "I don't want to forget."

Crawly pondered the distinct possibility that living in this house had actually made her certifiably _crazy_. "Why in blazes not?"

"Because I like knowing what to expect," she said softly. "If you make me forget, when it happens again – it'll be a nasty shock for me." Swallowing hard, she blinked back tears. "That will hurt so much worse than this does."

"Bithiah..."

She wanted a subject change – there were other ways of forgetting, less permanent ones, which she did not so readily object to. "Tell me a story."

"What kind of a story?"

"Something nice – tell me about when you were an angel."

"You know I don't talk about that." Especially not in Hastur's house, of all places.

She sighed. "Then just talk about _anything_ , all right? I don't care what it is."

"Right, then." He looked out at the courtyard, down at the currently bone-dry fountain basin and the little cracks forming in the walkway stones, then glanced back at Bithiah again. "Did you know there used to be a banana grove not far from where this house is?"

"No, I didn't."

"Yeah, great big bunches of bananas – you could probably have smelled it from the courtyard. Ripest, nicest bananas you ever saw."

Bithiah lifted her brow. "Is that so? What happened to it?"

"Oh, one year great big group of gorillas comes rampaging through here – _whoop_ – and just took the whole bloody thing with them. For a snack on the road."

"You're making this up," she realised, giving him a shakily amused half smile.

"Yeah," he admitted, grinning back teasingly. "Nice story, though, I thought – happy ending and all that."

" _Sure_ ," she laughed, "if you're a gorilla."

"You don't like gorillas?"

"No, I like them fine – they're such funny, furry things, you know – they make nests."

"No, they _don't_ ," Crawly snorted, with unusual fervour. "Whoever heard of a gorilla making a nest?"

"They do!"

" _Nah_ , next thing you'll be telling me unicorns lay eggs."

"Who knows?" she said, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin on them. "Maybe they _do_."

* * *

_3035 B.C._

Aziraphale was once again in the marketplace, and once again apprehensive about the people therein. Even with Noah and his family telling them they needed to stop being horrible to each other or God was literally going to kill them, they'd only been getting worse every day. The ark, though it was far from completed, had metaphorically been ticking away, ever louder. The day of the great storm was closer with every second that slipped by unheeded.

The angel tried to distract himself with buying figs at the stall he was currently in front of, tried to take his mind off everything else for just a few moments.

Then he heard a familiar voice over at the fishmonger's stall. "I don't care what you say – this is _not_ fresh – I _know_ what fresh fish smells like. This? This is something entirely else."

_Crawly._

Aziraphale turned slowly. Sure enough, he could see a red-haired figure in black, leaning over the fishmonger's wooden worktop.

He hadn't seen the demon – except from a far distance, accompanying Bithiah – since Noah began his building work. Crawly, he expected, probably blamed him – or at least his side, which sometimes amounted to the same thing, though perhaps it really shouldn't – for the upcoming flood. Doubtless the demon had been avoiding him, which was only good sense. And it wasn't as if Aziraphale _missed_ him, or anything. Not missed, exactly...

No, he was just glad to see him looking well enough. As well as mildly concerned over the edge to his tone. Crawly sounded...off... Not that he knew what Crawly _ought_ to sound like. Certainly they weren't close enough for that. It was just his natural angel intuition working overtime, most likely. He would have noticed _anyone_ acting abnormally in this tense setting.

"Er... Hello, Crawly."

Crawly grunted and held up a finger to the fishmonger. "Uh, yeah."

"Where's...um..."

"Bithiah?" Crawly sighed wearily. "She's at the house, sequestered in her sitting room, refusing to talk to anyone or eat."

"Oh, my dear, she's not _ill_?"

"She's pregnant."

"Ah." Aziraphale rung his hands – if it weren't a Nephilim baby, he would have offered congratulations. As it was, he didn't quite know what to do. "She really shouldn't be starving herself in that case."

"No," said Crawly, tetchily. "She shouldn't."

"What's happened?"

"She's a bloody _idiot_ , that's what's happened."

"How do you mean?"

"She honestly thought, after it was born, Hastur was going to let her keep the baby."

"He isn't?"

"Of course not! It'll be sent to the nursery with the others, left under the care of whatever hapless demon they've got running it now." Crawly groaned. "You know, I tried telling her the baby won't be normal – that it won't even look like her – the chances of her feeling motherly affection after she sees it aren't very high..."

"And?"

"And now she's on a hunger strike."

"That's unfortunate."

"More than you can imagine." Crawly looked over his shoulder, double checking nobody in particular was watching them. "Hastur doesn't actually _care_ if this baby, or his wife for that matter, lives or dies. As far as he's concerned, he can replace either one of them quickly enough. All the same, if Bithiah loses this child, that's it, he's done with her."

"What do you mean _done_?"

"I _mean_ she'll be out on the street and Hastur will make another woman Duchess of Hell."

"And," said Aziraphale, "you don't want that."

"Of course I don't."

Or rather, the confused demon wasn't sure _what_ he wanted. If dismissal from Hastur's household meant Bithiah was guaranteed a happier life and he'd be returning to his usual brand of temptations, no more of this being at Hastur and Ligur's whiny beck and call, that would be all right. But he didn't know that would be the outcome, not for sure. Hastur didn't like to see Crawly win – even small victories, minor triumphs on Crawly's part, were intolerable to the duke of Hell. He'd find some way to make them both suffer. Better the devil you _know_. Pun not intended.

"What are you going to do?" Aziraphale asked gently, his hand lingering in the air near Crawly's arm as if he very much wanted to pat it consolingly but couldn't quite bring himself to.

Crawly coyly glanced sidelong at the fishmonger. "I'm going to bring her some fresh fish, if this _person_ " – his tone indicated that 'person' was the most vicious of insults – "will stop messing around and _sell it to me_."

The fishmonger, with a bit more interest in his expression, pulled out another, bigger fish and held it out to Crawly, who sniffed offhandedly and muttered that it was marginally acceptable. Then he said, in a clearer voice, "You know who this is?" He was motioning at Aziraphale.

"Yeah," said the fishmonger, wiping his nose with the back of his wrist.

"You've seen me talking to him? Heard what we said?"

"Yeah."

Crawly placed six silver coins on the worktop. The fishmonger reached for them, but the demon was quicker and slapped his own hand over the coins. "No, you _haven't_ ," he hissed, his eyes darkening to amber. "You've ssseen nothing. You've _heard_ nothing. Underssstand?"

The fishmonger nodded.

"Good." Crawly lifted his hand.

* * *

"Bithiah, you're being ridiculous. _Eat_ something, for Satan's sake!"

Wordlessly, she shifted away from him, resting her hands protectively on her rounded stomach.

"You'll get weak if you don't eat."

"I don't _care_ ," she mumbled, the first words she'd said to him in two days.

"What about the baby, then?" It was his only leverage. Nothing else touched her – not promises, nor threats. But for whatever reason, even though it was Hastur's monster child, she loved that stupid baby growing inside of her. "He could die. I know you don't want _that_."

"What makes you so sure it's a _he_?"

"Hastur only has boys – _Ligur_ has girls." Crawly shrugged. "I don't know why."

"I want this baby, Crawly – I won't let them take it from me."

"Hastur isn't going to give in," he said, almost pleadingly. "Stop being so damn stubborn; let him have this one. You can have _other_ babies, Bithiah, someday."

The look she gave him in response was heartbreaking. "What if I _can't_? We both know I took longer than Hastur expected for me conceive this one." Tears filled her eyes. "Every time one of the other demons announced they'd got a woman pregnant, he'd look at me with disgust, like I was broken and worthless. This baby's like a miracle. What if, after this, I can't..."

"So your brilliant plan, Bithiah, is to starve both yourself and this so-called miracle baby? Do you have any idea how insane–"

Thrusting her face into her hands, she began sobbing in an unbridled manner, like he'd never seen before. Crawly was shell-shocked. He'd seen her take a beating from Hastur without batting an eye. Seen Ligur, who could get bizarrely jealous of her at certain moments, mistreat her almost as badly as her husband did. And nothing. She _never_ cracked. This... Of all things to reach the end of her tether over... Crawly couldn't understand it. And yet it was unbearable.

"Don't," she choked out, "let them take my son from me, _please_."

* * *

"All right, so what do I have to do for you to let her keep this stupid baby?" snapped Crawly, positioning himself directly in front of Hastur so the duke couldn't ignore him.

"Let me think," simpered Hastur, running his fingers along the polished table in his study. "What does Crawly have to bargain with?" He pivoted halfway and looking about him like he was addressing an imaginary audience. "That's right." His lips twisted into a tight, satisfied smile. " _Nothing_."

"You've already got a couple sons away, being brought up how you want, and it's not like Bithiah will actually raise the kid – he's in _your_ house, after all." Crawly twitched, sniffing with forced causality. "What's it going to hurt to humour her?"

"I don't _like_ her."

"Who?"

" _Bithiah_ ," sneered Hastur, dragging his fingers more slowly so that they squeaked menacingly against the varnish. Flames sparked around his fingertips and hellish flames cracked long the carved table-legs. "It was fun for a while, but she's begun to irritate me."

"Well, you picked her out."

Hastur's black eyes fixed on Crawly's face and stared for a long, intense moment. "You want her to keep the baby? I'll agree to it."

"Really?"

"Yes." He chuckled darkly. "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"You have to deliver the baby."

" _Wot_? You mean _deliver_ , deliver?" Crawly winced. "Hastur, that's not really–"

"It's my only offer."

"But _why_?"

"Because _what's it going to hurt to humour me_?"

The _real_ answer was obvious, though. Because it made Crawly uncomfortable, and Hastur _loved_ that. To him, Bithiah was a toy that no longer held any fascination. A toy he'd been meaning to discard for a while, if he could just find the time. Except for where Crawly was involved. Anything he could use to torment the flash bastard who always got under his skin was well worth keeping, well worth maintaining. Provided, of course, he kept finding new ways of using it to achieve that end.

Besides, the irony that Crawly had agreed to work in this household to _avoid_ being saddled with Nephilim babies only to be reduced to begging for the person he spent the most time with to keep one wasn't entirely lost on Hastur. With his lack of imagination, he couldn't have _planned_ it any better – he'd never have had the creativity to think it up on his _own_.

As for Crawly, he was thinking, well, the midwife would be there if anything went wrong, it wasn't as though he'd need to _do_ anything, just sort of be there in the room while she popped that sucker out... Not his idea of a good time, but probably worth it if it would get Bithiah to stop this hunger strike rubbish.

" _Fine_ ," he exhaled, blowing out his cheeks melodramatically, hoping Hastur would think he'd really gotten to him and let the matter stand exactly as it was without getting any nastier. "I agree."

* * *

The sun was setting when Bithiah heard her sitting room doors open and looked up, prepared to shake her head no again when she saw Crawly was carrying a tray of food.

He balanced the tray on one arm so he could hold up his other hand. "You're going to want to eat after I tell you this."

Her eyes widened. "You don't mean...?"

"You can keep him."

" _Thank_ you," she gasped brokenly, staring at him with an enraptured expression.

"Don't thank me," said Crawly, setting the tray down on the cushion in front of her. "But you don't _forget_ this, either, understand?"

Biting back a grateful smile, she shook her head, completely overcome with joy and relief. " _Never_ , I promise."

"Now I could take the tray back, if you aren't hungry..." he teased.

"Are you crazy?" Scooting forward, she began to cram grapes and bread into her mouth.

Crawly reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Not so fast, you'll choke. Slowly. It's not going anywhere." Loosening his grip and slowly letting her go, he then gripped the water jug and started pouring some into a goblet. "Drink some water while you're at it."

Once the edge had been taken off her hunger, she noticed a second goblet, bigger, with a thick greenish liquid inside. "What's that?"

"Hastur said you need to drink it," Crawly said. "It's supposed to be good for the baby."

Bringing the goblet's rim to her nose she made a face.

"I _know_ ," Crawly commiserated. "It smells like excrement."

"It smells like Hastur," she grumbled.

Crawly bit back a grin – the woman had a point. "Just drink half. We'll tell Hastur you drank the whole thing. Nobody needs to know."

* * *

_Nearly 3034 B.C._

"Oh, no, no – absolutely not. No handmaidens, no midwife," said Hastur, keeping his voice low despite the fact that Bithiah was screaming wordlessly at the top of hers.

Labour pains; quite the bugger, apparently.

At first, Crawly couldn't take in what Hastur meant, couldn't believe he'd actually do what was being implied, and then the coin dropped and he wanted – more than he ever had before – to throttle the frog-headed bastard. "You _can't_ be serious!"

"Oh, I _can_ ," Hastur assured him. "And I am. Our agreement was that you deliver the baby. You want her to keep it, _you_ take care of _everything_."

Before Crawly could react, signalled by the slightest nod from Hastur, the nearest servants grabbed him by the arms and shoved him into the sitting room.

"Have fun, Crawly," sneered Hastur.

The doors banged shut behind him.

Blessing loudly, he lunged forward and grabbed at the knob rattling it madly. It wouldn't turn. The door was locked, as well as reinforced by some manner of demonic curse, because no matter how hard he kicked at it the wood refused to splinter.

Panting in the furthest corner of the room, where she was crouched over, Bithiah looked up – saw Crawly was alone and white as a ghost – and whimpered. " _Shit_."

" _WhatdoIdo_?" blurted the demon, as if it were all one long word.

"To _start_ you can help me over to the rug so I can lie down! I'm having a god-damn _baby_ , I'm not passing a kidney stone!"

" _Right_..." Rather sheepishly, Crawly stumbled over and started pulling her up, easing her out of the corner and into the middle of the room. "Now what?"

" _Ahhhhhhhhh_!"

The demon started looking around the room, searching for something that might help. What did midwives use? He'd never actually seen a human give birth before, so he wasn't sure if there were any particular _tools_ involved.

Bithiah, between contractions for the moment, glared at him disdainfully as he held up a folded scrap of cloth.

"And what do you propose to do with that?" she demanded.

"It's a pot holder," Crawly said pathetically. "Er...to, uh...catch the baby when it comes out."

"It's a baby, not an apple pie!"

Rather embarrassed, Crawly tossed it aside. What else _was_ there? Was he supposed to get hot water? He could use his demonic powers to make hot water appear, if only he knew what it was _for_...

"Ahhhhhhh!"

"Look. Bithiah. I can't do this."

" _You_ can't do this? _I'm_ the one who's – ahhhhhh–"

"This isn't an ordinary baby and the birth is going to be more difficult – I have no idea what I'm doing – you need an actual midwife in here."

"Hastur'll take the baby away from me."

" _Ugggghh_!"

"Just get down there and deliver the damn baby!"

" _How_?"

"I don't _know_ ," she snapped, struggling to regulate her breathing. "I'm going to keep pushing – you just tell me when you see its head. Can you do _that_?"

A few minutes ticked by, the pain obviously getting worse for her. "This is all your fault. You did this to me!" she snarled accusingly.

"Oi! How d'you figure?"

"Eat the apple, Eve, nothing bad will happen. It's not like God will increase how much pain you and all other women have trying to bring children into the world!"

"Oh." Crawly reddened, cheeks quickly growing rather hot. " _That_." He scratched the back of his neck and winced. "I didn't think of that."

"Oh, of _course_ you didn't," Bithiah growled through clenched teeth. "You're a man!"

"'m _not_ , actually."

"Man-shaped creature, then." She let out another scream. "Anything happening on your end?"

Apart from the fact that he was extremely uncomfortable, no. "Sorry." Suddenly, though, there was something. "Wait, there's..." A foot. A big, fat giant baby foot. Even Crawly – who knew nothing about birthing – knew that wasn't right. " _Shit_! The baby's the wrong way around."

"What do we do now?" she whimpered.

"There's nothing else for it – I'm sorry." They were, Crawly grimly concluded, going to have to let Hastur win this one. He staggered to his feet and began walking towards the doors, wondering if the duke of Hell was even still out there. Probably he was, gloating.

"Don't you _dare_!"

"You don't get it, do you?" Crawly's voice was raw, scratchy, coming out in a hoarse gasp of desperation. "We are _fucked_."

"You–" she panted. "You think of something – something else – right now or..."

"Or _what_?" he hissed, whirling on her with dilated pupils.

"Or..." She didn't finish; her eyes were rolling to the back of her head.

The demon looked at the doors, then back at the birthing woman rapidly slipping into unconsciousness. Making up his mind at last, he rushed back to her and slapped her lightly on the cheek. "You win. Come on, stay with me."

Crawly had always secretly suspected that if he'd stuck on Heaven's side of the rebellion long enough for the earth to be formed and animals and humans to be created, he'd have had something of a natural talent for – or, at the very least, an inclination towards – healing. Naturally, though, that wasn't something they were big on down in Hell. His lot were meant to make things worse, not better. _Angels_ healed, _demons_ broke cart wheels and shoved people off tall precipices while laughing maniacally. Just one of those things.

And so, faced with this – with a freakishly large baby turned the wrong way about and a struggling mother screaming in pain – Crawly was at a bit of a loss. He'd have to give it a go – find out if there was anything to his speculations regarding healing abilities – there was nothing else for it. Although, truly, he wished Aziraphale was there. He'd have felt better if the angel could have done it in his place.

Wouldn't that be something, if they could just switch out like that, when needed?

Life would be a lot easier.

But, wait, they were both angel stock, weren't they? If Aziraphale had to smite someone wicked, he could kill them the same way Crawly would if their positions were reversed. Demon, angel. Different names for the same sort of creature, really, when you left the trappings of morality out of it. If one was physically capable of healing, so was the other. That was just _logic_...

The demon concentrated. _Come on, turn around. Ease, ease, ease..._

Bithiah's rapid breathing slowed, became more relaxed despite being laboured. The foot went back in. There was a shift. She moaned. He saw it, then. A head.

"Thank Go–" He bit it back.

* * *

"Been thinking. You really think Crawly will have the stomach for it?" Ligur mused, watching a burning ant – who he'd personally set on fire for his own amusement – dash across the tablecloth.

"Mr. Slick will have to manage, though I imagine he's probably been sick all over the floor by now." Hastur wagged a dripping little finger over the desperate ant, letting a miniscule drop of water run down his nail and making it slide right back up the moment the ant began to grow hopeful of relief.

Ligur smiled, chuckling to himself. "Heh."

The ant – out of its mind with agony – finally exploded.

"Oh." Hastur frowned disappointedly at the gooey little black dot on the cloth where the ant had been. "Look at that."

Ligur placed his cupped hands on the table and, when he withdrew them, there was a fat, burning beetle running back and forth.

Hastur grinned, his black eyes as contented as they ever were.

* * *

"Welcome to the world, you son of a bitch," Crawly told the large, freshly swaddled baby as he placed him in Bithiah's waiting arms.

Bithiah raised a single dark eyebrow at the demon. " _Excuse me_?"

"I was actually referring to _Hastur_ , but feel free to take that any way you want."

Her whole – utterly exhausted – body shook; she was laughing so hard she began crying, tears streaming down her face.

"Congratulations, Bithiah." His voice was softer now, caught somewhere between resignation and genuine gentleness. "You have a son."

"A grand duke of Hell," she marvelled, pressing her nose against that of her child's and nuzzling it. "My son." Pulling back, she examined the material her baby was wrapped in, noting the gold and silver threads and oddly familiar pattern of leaves and berries. "Hold on. Where did you get this blanket?"

"Eh..." Crawly motioned with his head towards the nearest – glaringly bare – window.

Bithiah's mouth from a tight _O_ of amused – yet equally horrified – shock. " _Crawly_!" she rasped. "These were my _good curtains_ , weren't they? I spent _six months_ embroidering those!"

"There was nothing else in here!" he protested, flinging out an arm and gesturing around the large, useless room dramatically.

Alas, all the fancy baby things (including night-garments, blankets, and soft animals) Bithiah had spent most of her time making were kept in another room entirely, a room the household servants were setting up as a sort of makeshift nursery – and, locked in as they were, they had no access to _any_ of them.

Long-sufferingly, Bithiah took the demon's desecration of her beautiful curtains in stride. Their loss meant very little when weighed against the joy of keeping her newborn son.

She looked back down at the baby and began crooning to it in a teasing, sing-song tone. "Well, at least Uncle Crawly had the good sense to take the rod out first, didn't he, sweetie?"

The doors – now unlocked – banged open as Hastur – followed closely by three dull-eyed servants, Ligur, and a pandering nobody of a demon whose name Crawly was always forgetting – came striding in.

"It's done?" Hastur demanded.

Bithiah lifted her arms proudly (no small feat, either, as it was rather a heavy baby).

"Mother and child both fine, I take it?" The duke of Hell appeared less than thrilled by this.

Crawly smiled, all teeth. "Perfectly so."

* * *

_3030 B.C._

"No peeking." Bithiah secured the blindfold behind Crawly's head. "One." She pushed on his shoulder, spinning him around. "Two. Keep turning." He spun dumbly in a circle, muttering something under his breath. " _Three_."

He felt her let go, heard the rustle of her garment as she lifted it so she could run across the courtyard towards her son (who was only four and already came up to Crawly's chest in height). Crawly pictured her grabbing the kid's hand and scurrying sideways.

"Now what?" he said, trying to sound wearier than he actually was.

"You have to find us," laughed Bithiah.

"Wot? Blindfolded?"

"That's how the game works."

Crawly reached out an arm and took a few steps forward.

The little Nephilim boy tittered.

Crawly registered the direction, opposite to where he'd been turned, and changed his.

Bithiah's sandals made a scraping noise as she hurried further away, swallowing back a laugh. "Come on." There was the noise of her son following. In a clearer, louder voice, meant for Crawly, she said, "We're over _here_!"

The smile on the demon's face began to slip. He went rigid, stood still.

"Crawly?" said Bithiah, worriedly.

He sniffed the air, nostrils flaring. Chest heaving, his hands flew to his head and he ripped off the blindfold. A fibre caught on the nail of his little finger, splitting seams and tearing it nearly in half.

"That's _cheating_!" trilled Hastur's son, pointing at the pieces of torn up blindfold in the demon's hands. "Uncle Crawly's cheating."

"Hush, love." Bithiah shushed him. "Crawly, what _is_ it?"

The demon's eyes darted back and forth. "Something's changed."

"Changed how?"

He sniffed again. "Hastur has company – inside."

"Oh?" Bithiah's mouth twisted, turning her expression bitter and cold.

Crawly shook his head. He knew what she was thinking. Hastur hurt her, and she had no personal fondness for her husband's company, yet she always got viciously jealous of any mistresses he took. Probably because she – being far from stupid – knew they were all vying to replace her in more areas than Hastur's bedroom. Which was why Crawly had taken to leaning out of windows and accidentally maliciously emptying piss-pots on their heads when they came up the walkway to the house. If you really thought about it, they'd smell roughly the same after a night with Hastur anyway – he was just speeding up the process a bit. Not that Bithiah needed his help. She was good at getting rid of them on her own. At least two women had been given the cold shoulder by Hastur after Bithiah started a rumour that they'd been seen pleasuring Asmodeus behind a marketplace stall. And she'd been shrewd enough to tell _Ligur_ instead of her husband – that way, when Hastur inevitably heard it from his second, he didn't even question the source, not the way he would have if she'd told him herself. He didn't trust Bithiah, or any _other_ demons – including 'that damn sleaze, Asmodeus', as he called him – but he'd never doubt _Ligur_.

But _this_ was not _that_.

"No." Crawly shivered. "It's not that kind of company."

Bithiah tightened her grip on her son's hand. "Somebody from Hell?"

His eyes drifted upwards. Dark clouds of a strange magenta hue were directly above the courtyard. They only surrounded Hastur's property. The nearby field they could just glimpse that bordered the duke of Hell's land but belonged to somebody else had nothing but normal blue skies above it.

The Nephilim boy stretched out his hand. A ruby-coloured drop fell from the sky and landed on the back of his wrist.

He yanked with his other hand – the hand Bithiah still held – with enough childishly ignorant force to make her twist her face in pain. "Mother, lookit!"

"Ouch! Be _gentle_ , my love. You're much, much _stronger_ than Mother, remember? Because of Father. We've talked about this."

" _Look_!"

With a sigh, she did. "Is that..."

"Blood," said Crawly, as six or seven red drops landed between them, splashing up and splattering their garments.

"Raining blood..." She knit her brow. "Yuck. I don't understand. This – this isn't that storm Noah's been going on about? I mean, it can't be – it's only over _us_."

"No... This is..." Crawly face had gone very white under the spreading red stains running down both his cheeks. "Bithiah, get in the house _now_."

"Why?"

"You need to get in the house, get cleaned off, put on the best you have, and present yourself in the receiving room _now_." He swallowed. "And when you see Hastur's guest, _smile_. Don't do anything except smile and agree with anything he says, d'you _understand_?"

"Mother!" The Nephilim child wasn't liking being out in the sticky, coagulating rain.

But she didn't move, not yet. "Who's is it?"

"No time to explain," he hissed. "Inside, _now_."

* * *

Wearing her best garment and as many pieces of fancy jewellery she could physically get onto her body – her dark hair washed clean of blood, plaited elegantly, and tied back – Bithiah walked down the long corridors to the receiving room.

Lounging in front of the most elaborate spread of foods and goods she'd ever seen Hastur put out before were her husband, Ligur, Crawly, Beelzebub, and a tall demon (or, at least, presumably he was a demon) with short dark-gold curls she'd never seen before.

"Ah," said the stranger, rising from his place. "You must be Bithiah. Duchess of Hell."

She sank into a curtsey and – noticing Crawly frantically miming 'smile' out of the corner of her eye – remembered what he'd said in the courtyard and flashed the stranger the most beguiling smile she could manage.

The stranger's eyes, which were a glowing blood-red, flashed. He took her hand in his, brought it to his mouth – to lips that were as hot as a raging fever – and kissed it.

She had the good sense – even not knowing yet exactly who he was – not to pull it away; to let _him_ drop her hand when _he_ was finished with it.

"I didn't catch your name," Bithiah said, after an awkward pause.

Hastur guffawed. "She's joking, Master. Of course she knows who you are. She makes jokes to please me. Always love a good joke, me."

" _Master_ ," she echoed, and understood at last exactly what had turned Crawly white as a ghost under the blood rain. "You're... You're the devil. _Satan_."

* * *

Hot, sulphuric breath burned against Crawly's earlobe. "You'll see me after the meal, darling."

Crawly nodded as Satan reached over and brushed a lock of his hair off one shoulder. "We have a great deal to discuss, you and I." His thumb lingered on the slightly crimped ends of the red plait dangling beside one of Crawly's long, dark curls. "It's been a long time."

Across the gourmet spread – an endless array of figs, pomegranates, breads, sweet pastries, fish, and fine cheeses – seated between Hastur and Ligur (both of which kept leaning over her to talk to each other and – occasionally – shout something in unison to Beelzebub, who was on Satan's other side, looking like a thing quite _above_ all this) Bithiah watched this interaction intently.

On her face was a very serious look Crawly couldn't put a name to.

What was she puzzling out in her mind? Humans didn't see much, and they comprehended even less. But Bithiah was much more observant than most and – if she was guessing at Crawly's feelings right then – she might also get closer to the truth than most.

He wasn't sure if he wanted that. The demon had gotten so used to his private horrors belonging only to himself that he was almost defensive of them. His fears were his own, not for somebody else to be prodding at and examining for cracks and chips as if they were used pottery being sold in the marketplace.

* * *

After she put her son to bed, Bithiah picked up a warm, weighted woolen blanket and flung it over one arm. With her free hand, she lit a candle and set it in a brass holder. Then she made her way to Hastur's usual living quarters. This was, naturally, where the devil would have likely summoned Crawly for whatever private conversation he planned to have with him. If it had been any other guest, it would have been the guest quarters on the other side of the house – somebody this important, Satan himself, however, warranted Hastur relinquishing the best he usually kept for himself.

Stood to reason, really.

She would wait outside, she decided.

The wood of the door was thick, and – even if she _had_ come to eavesdrop – she wouldn't have been able to hear what was happening. She'd already known, of course, firsthand, how soundproof that room actually was.

So it hadn't been to spy, to cure her morbid curiosity, that she'd come here.

No, she was there because of the look on Crawly's face when Satan spoke to him earlier. He'd _looked_ the way she _felt_ every time she had to be alone with Hastur.

It was the broken expression of an _owned_ creature who knew he had no choice, no free will. A creature who knew he could be made to do something dreadful for a lark, on his master's whim. And that he _would_ do it, without hesitation, every time. No matter how ugly it made him feel inside.

She knew too well what that was like. So she waited. Waited to comfort him when it was over.

Sure enough, the door opened after what felt like forever and Crawly – a blank, numb expression on his face – came out.

He had no physical injuries, but she hadn't expected any. The beings of Hell, she suspected, had other ways of hurting each other – ways that they didn't need to bother with on _humans_ because it was too easy to break _them_ with less.

Wordlessly, Bithiah lifted up her arms and tossed the heavy blanket over the demon's thin shoulders. "Don't speak," she whispered, putting her arms around him and leading him away. "Come with me."

She took him back to her own sitting room and settled him in the most comfortable chair, taking the blanket off his shoulders and tucking it around his lap.

"There. Nice and snug and safe."

His snaky eyes gleamed amber in the dark, staring straight ahead. He didn't look at her. Or at anything else, apart from directing an occasional stiff glance at the blood-streaked window.

"I know." She stroked his arm. "I know how it hurts. It's all right, I _know_."

And he didn't contradict her. Because she _did_ , or nearly enough.

"It's over..." murmured Bithiah, leaning consolingly against his arm. "You made it through. Whatever happened, whatever was said or done, it's over now."

He blinked, slow and cool, then acknowledged her by meeting her eyes for the briefest of seconds.

It was enough to assure her he was still taking everything in – even if he didn't look like he was.

"Poor Crawly."

Almost a quarter of an hour ticked by, Bithiah patiently crouched beside him and whispering gentle nonsense – all about how he wasn't _alone_ and mustn't despair, how she was right here with him – before he finally spoke.

He was a little more like himself now. "Tell me a story," he teased weakly.

"What about?"

"Don't care. Anything you like."

There was a long pause.

And then, "Did you know there used to be a banana grove not far from this house?"

Crawly's body shook, with laughter or restrained tears – or both. He sniffed. "You're making that up."

"Yes, but it has a happy ending." She lowered her head, resting her temple against his wrist.

"I'm _fine_ , Bithiah," he said, in a different voice. "Really. It's just one of those things; head office can't _always_ be happy with your work."

"Mmm," she said without lifting her head.

"You get used to it, after the first few hundred times."

"Do you?" she asked, point blank, but as if she already knew the answer and it was no good trying to fool _her_.

"No."


	3. Part 3 of 6

_The Book of Bithiah_

A _Good Omens_ fanfiction

Part **3** of **6**

_Mesopotamia, 3030 B.C._

The house was streaked (and speckled, and splattered) with blood. It was as though somebody had emptied a bucket of blood all over the roof and let it drip down the sides as a stylistic choice.

Even if the principality _hadn't_ been out for a sleepless night's flight and soared too near where he definitely shouldn't have been, and thus spied the garish lines and puddles of red in the silver-white of the near-full moon while in the air, he'd have learned about it soon enough secondhand. The house was not located in an especially secluded area and the sight of it was far from unsensational.

It quickly become common knowledge.

Everybody would've worked out what it meant soon enough: Duke Hastur had had a visit from the devil.

Aziraphale had flown away anxiously.

He needed to get back to his dwelling and see if there was some chance of contacting Heaven. If they didn't know already, they ought to be told that Satan was outside of Hell and roving the earth with his minions.

And yet there was this, well, this _pull_ – something that urgently whispered he ought to have made a quick detour and checked if Crawly was all right.

No, not that he _ought_ to.

A pull that declared he _wanted_ to.

Of course it was pure nonsense through and through. Crawly was a demon like the others. Why should Satan's arrival mean any more danger for _him_ than for Hastur or Ligur or Asmodeus?

Aziraphale didn't know why he was so worried for Crawly, and thus did his best – inadequate though it proved to be – to push the thought away.

He was able to say to the Metatron – with complete honesty – that he'd gone home as soon as he realised what was afoot, as soon as he learned the being they'd both formerly known as Lucifer had turned up.

Not that the Metatron cared. He seemed to think, so long as Noah kept building that ark, none of the rest mattered any more.

Probably he was quite right.

But still.

When the blue light that had shown through the ceiling beams faded, leaving a shaken Aziraphale alone, he knelt there in the flickering light of the candles, his plump hands spread out imploringly.

He prayed for several hours, with more ease than he'd spoken to the Metatron with, since he wasn't expecting another answer, but he couldn't pray for the person he _wanted_ to.

* * *

It was because he hadn't prayed for it – very _specifically_ hadn't prayed for it – and was not expecting any kind of answer, that Aziraphale was surprised when Crawly turned up at his door the following afternoon.

He didn't realise it _was_ Crawly at first.

From the window of his dwelling, it was just a slim, retreating figure in black, a hood pulled over its head.

When he got nearer to the door, preparing to open it, Aziraphale's natural senses told him it was a supernatural being on the other side.

He very nearly didn't answer the door at all.

Then he spotted a red curl dangling from under the hood, knew exactly which demon it must be, and – despite knowing it was probably not safe – opened up.

"What are _you_ doing here?" the angel snapped, nonetheless hustling him inside. He hadn't even realised Crawly knew where he lived, much less than he would chance making a social call.

"Hello to you, too, Aziraphale – _I'm_ fine, thanks for asking."

Aziraphale softened. "You don't look well. What seems to be the matter?"

Crawly looked over his shoulder at the door, as if he expected somebody to break it down and haul him off at any moment. "I have to go away for a while."

" _Away_? But my dear fellow... That's..." He swallowed. "What about Bithiah?"

"I don't have a _choice_ ," he hissed. "I'm being put back on temptation duty."

"Does this have to do with...?" Aziraphale pointed down at the floorboards and raised his pale eyebrows emphatically.

"Saw the blood on the house, did you?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Yeah, you're right, anyway," Crawly admitted. "Satan's here, and he has a new job for me. Told me this morning. I thought he might have mentioned something like this last night when..." He trailed off, his tense expression suggesting he was remembering something darkly unpleasant which had occurred the evening before. "Anyway, he didn't. Saved it for today." He cleared his throat. "But the job's only temporary, shouldn't take more than a decade to complete. Grunt work, really, doesn't require any imagination. _Ligur_ could do it."

"But why come here?" the angel struggled to puzzle out. "It's a great risk at the best of times, and with Satan on earth..."

"I need a favour."

"Oh. Oh _no_. I can't be seen doing favours for demons." Aziraphale felt terrible saying it. His guilty mind kept taking him back to that beautiful drunken night by the pond, himself and this very demon and the glittering water and the shimmering, glowing fish... Could he deny him after that? Regardless of if that should have ever happened to begin with?

Crawly's dilating eyes flashed reactively, and if he'd been less sapped of energy, as well as less _desperate_ , he might have gotten very angry. "It's Bithiah. I need someone to keep an eye on her."

Aziraphale's cheeks were bright red. "She's a demon's wife, and an important one at that, not some kind of...of..." he sputtered miserably, wringing his hands. "Oh, some kind of _houseplant_ I can water while you're away!"

"There's no one else I can ask. You're hardly my first choice," Crawly said defensively.

" _Thank you_ ," snipped Aziraphale.

Crawly rolled his eyes. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"I don't see how I'd be able to do it – I'm not really supposed to be anywhere near Hastur's house, for one thing."

"Just... Sometimes she goes out." He gnawed at his lower lip; his expression suggested he was struggling with whether or not he should say more. "She... It's tense, but she's sort of friends with Japheth's wife. They _do_ talk, every once in a while. They'd be near the ark's construction site, whispering or exchanging news, and your lot sends you to check on the work there, don't they?"

The angel shrugged in admission.

"So just keep a bit of an eye out when she comes round."

"I suppose that would be all right." It wasn't as if it would require doing anything wrong, or being too near the Duke of Hell himself. Surely even if his side noticed him watching her now and again – and it didn't seem terribly likely they _would_ , having far more important matters to attend to – Aziraphale couldn't get into _too_ much trouble for looking out for a defenceless woman. Surely it shouldn't matter, in that case, who her husband was. Poor Bithiah was one of God's creatures, too, one of the unfortunate daughters of Eve as much as any other, for all her sins.

Crawly nodded. "I'll try to let you know when I'm back. Somehow." He shifted his weight, hopping lightly from one foot to the other. "Ooh-ah. _Ouch_. The floor's rather hot."

"Oh." He gave him an apologetic smile. "Yes. About that. I was talking to the Metatron just last night – there may still be some raw Heavenly power running through the place. Purely residual, of course."

"Guess I'd better go, then."

"Yes, I suppose you had better." And the angel felt his chest clench and wondered why he was suddenly suffering acute symptoms of bereavement and loneliness as the demon turned to go.

* * *

_Mesopotamia, 3020 B.C._

Crawly made his way towards Hastur's house with the strange feeling he'd never left it at all. The last ten years might as well have never happened; nothing was changed here, except for the fact that the house was long since washed free of the blood left during Satan's last visit.

Rather than take the front walkway, he went around back through the courtyard, also exactly the same as he'd left it, with its vulgar crane fountain and cracked pavement. The sun overhead was bright as the demon reached up to shield his eyes and squint towards the terrace where a familiar figure was sitting.

She shifted and wiped at her brow, setting aside a swatch of fabric she'd been stitching. With a little sigh, she glanced down, spotted Crawly, and let out a delighted shriek.

Bithiah pulled herself up, calling down that he better not move, better wait for her, because she'd be right there.

Doors loudly opened and closed. Her sandals were pounding on the stairs so rapidly he was slightly worried that she'd fall down them, certain she was skipping far too many at once in her haste.

Finally she appeared before him, breathless and running into his arms. One of her fists struck under his collarbone, reprimanding. "Shame on you! Why didn't you send word you were coming back today?"

Crawly pulled away. "I did."

A shadow passed over Bithiah's face. "Oh."

"Hastur must have forgotten to tell you." He studied her for a moment – she looked well enough, though unnervingly a bit older and with a couple of new, deeply creasing lines on her face that hadn't been there when he left.

Looking at her, he _could_ believe it had been ten years. _She_ was more changed than the house would ever be.

"You should know...he..." She sucked in her lips and wet them before going on. "He doesn't tell me _anything_ these days, Crawly – I haven't even _seen_ him in three weeks. He requested that I not eat with him in the evening. The servants have been bringing food to my room."

She ought to have been glad enough of this, but Crawly understood why she was far from it. An absent, uninterested Hastur didn't bode well for her continued future as Duchess of Hell, irregardless of the fact that she was the mother of his youngest Nephilim child.

It was one of things he'd feared when he left; that Hastur would decide he had no reason to want Bithiah in his house without Crawly there to torment. At least the small handful of self-imploding encoded messages Aziraphale had managed to send assured him he wouldn't come home to find another woman in Bithiah's place, Bithiah herself destitute and reduced to doing badness only knew _what_ in some remote in some shady alleyway.

" _Uncle Crawly_!" A very tall young man – almost seven feet high – who looked like Hastur would if he were gigantic and muscular with a broader nose and fatter mouth came rushing out of the house. "You're back!" He flung his long, thick arms around the demon, lifted him off the ground, and spun him around.

" _You've_ grown," Crawly commented, rather dryly.

"Yes," he agreed, his voice booming and deep. "A lot since you've seen me last, uncle."

"He wasn't sure if you'd remember him," explained Bithiah, with a real smile as she reached out and patted her enormous son's arm. "See? I _told_ you he would, my love. You fretted for nothing."

" _He_ ," echoed Crawly, incredulous, "wasn't sure if _I'd_ remember _him_."

"It was a long time ago," said the giant boy.

"Trust me – you're _not_ the sort of thing I'd _forget_."

After the Nephilim boy had set him back down on the paved stones and left for whatever pursuits his kind did all day, Crawly murmured, "He seems well enough."

"He's a sweet boy when he's left on his own." Bithiah glanced over her shoulder. "He's spoken of you a lot since you left."

"I couldn't help noticing he's the spitting image of Hastur." He raised an eyebrow. "Not that it's surprising."

"Less so than the others, believe it or not."

"Others?" echoed Crawly.

"His brothers."

His eyes widened. "You didn't...?"

"No." Her cheeks flushed. "His _half_ brothers."

"He spends time with Hastur's other children?" This was the first he'd heard of it.

"Of course – Hastur insists. He'd rather my son have as little of my solo influence as possible."

The demon's curiosity was piqued. "What are they like now?"

"One is all right, respectful," Bithiah told him, fiddling sombrely with a pair of interlocking silver rings on her right ring and little fingers. "Addresses me as duchess of Hell, sometimes brings small gifts. He has unkind eyes, but he's restrained. Sensible. _Civil_ , I suppose would be the best way to describe him. The other..." She shivered, leaving off playing with the rings and rubbing instead at the rising goose pimples on the sides of her arms. "I just try never to be alone with him if I can avoid it."

"Does..." He motioned over in the direction her son had gone. "Does _he_ like them?"

"Oh, he _adores_ them."

"You would rather he didn't?"

"I can understand him wanting to be around others like himself – the world...it's not... This world wasn't designed for giants, and I hate the thought of my only child feeling like an outcast in it. But Hastur has it in his head _exactly_ the sort of...persons...he wants them to be, and he always gets his way. You know he does. It's already happening." She let out a sharp breath. "Come inside. We'll have some refreshments brought to my sitting room and I'll tell you more about how things are now."

Crawly shook his head regretfully; he'd much rather have gone with her, if he'd had the slightest chance of getting away with it. "I have to report to Hastur."

* * *

It was an uncomfortable night for them both. For the first time in ages, Bithiah was summoned, ordered to dress for the evening meal and to recline beside Hastur, who dragged it out as long as he possibly could. He was trying to get a rise out of Crawly, who he thought he'd enjoy tormenting a bit now that he was back from the temptation mission.

Crawly felt completely trapped. Even knowing Hastur only _wanted_ to see him squirm, it was impossible not to flinch involuntarily watching him behave unnervingly possessive towards Bithiah. And, in all honesty, Crawly wasn't sure he shouldn't. If he didn't give Hastur at least _some_ pleasure from his own discomfort, he might as well be signing Bithiah's dismissal with his own true name. The problem was, if he showed too much sympathy for her over any _particular_ action on Hastur's part, the duke of Hell would keep doing it, hoping to upset him further. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage him to _hurt_ Bithiah. After all, for a demon with no imagination, Hastur was already plenty good at thinking up that sort of thing on his own.

So the entire evening consisted of Hastur reaching over and grabbing at Bithiah in various ways – sometimes with a light yet menacing touch, others with a heavy-handed force like he was going to break an arm or tear her neck open with his bare hands right in front of Crawly.

The truth was simple. Hastur was _bored_. He clearly hoped a display of cruelty would bring a twinge of amusement back into his corporation and was very quickly getting angry when it wasn't doing so.

Hastur let his hand heat up, glowing fiery red-hot, like a branding iron, then placed it on Bithiah's upper thigh.

She grit her teeth, struggling not to make a noise of pain, but a strangled cry escaped.

Crawly drew in a hissing breath, eyes flashing.

Hastur grinned over at him, slowly lifting his hand, revealing a burned-through garment and seared flesh.

"It's late," Crawly tried, swallowing back bile. "I'll take her upstairs."

Beginning, at last, to really enjoy himself, Hastur grinned even wider, leaning his weight against his wife. "Oh, no, that won't be necessary, Crawly. She'll stay with me tonight. You're dismissed for the rest of the evening."

* * *

Crawly wasn't certain what possessed him to visit Aziraphale that night. It went beyond simply not wanting to be alone with his miserable thoughts, feeling sorry for Bithiah. Once he was sure he wasn't being followed by any agents of Hell – Hastur's household spies or otherwise – the demon made his way to the angel's dwelling as fast as his feet would carry him.

Aziraphale nearly demanded, as he had the last time, what he thought he was doing turning up like this, didn't he understand how unsafe– Then he saw the look on the demon's face and said nothing.

He couldn't say he understood – because he didn't, really. But there is a more universal kind of pain shared between all living creatures, and Aziraphale understood _that_ perfectly. Perhaps, deep down, Crawly had _known_ he would. Perhaps that was why he had brought himself, dazed and anxious, here.

The angel sat the demon down beside a warm cooking fire. He offered him food (some manner of overly-boiled stew), which he didn't touch, and some sweet grape wine, which he accepted gratefully.

While Crawly drank, Aziraphale stoked the fire to keep it nice and high, good and warm, softly glowing orange and amber as it crackled.

"Thank you," Crawly said, once the wine was gone and the fire had nearly burned itself out.

"You're welcome." Aziraphale looked down, ever modest. "Not that it was very _good_ wine, anyway, I'm afraid."

He squinted at the angel; the alcohol messed somewhat with his normally flawless demonic eyesight. "Nuh. I didn't mean the wine."

"Ah." A clean, plump hand patted his shoulder in an automatic gesture it likely would not have performed if its owner had given it even a moment's thought.

Thinking of Hastur's ugly burning hands, as well as Satan's own roughly burnt ones which did not match his other more handsome features, it occurred to Crawly then just what astoundingly _beautiful_ hands Aziraphale had.

So soft, so unmarred.

He wondered if his own – long ago, when he'd been an angel himself – had ever looked or felt anything like that. He considered his long fingers and recalled the little knobby callouses he'd had from star-building in the olden days, and decided, no, probably not.

With a slurred, half murmured goodbye, not bothering to sober up, Crawly left the angel's dwelling and staggered back to Hastur's house, turning up around dawn.

"I almost forgot how much it hurt." Bithiah was in the middle of her sitting room – on the cold, hard floor beside the rug – wide-awake, plainly not having gotten any sleep, hunched under a blanket Crawly had the good sense, this time, not to try and take away from her.

He asked, in a slurred drunken voice, if she wanted him to tell her a story.

In no mood to hear tales of the non-existent banana grove again, she shook her head no and looked away from him. "Where were you?"

"Nowhere." He hiccuped, then burped unbecomingly, almost tripping over the nearest furnishing. It would have been comical, if the pair of them weren't so pathetically tragic and broken-looking.

"Were you with your second?"

"He's _not_ my–"

"You _were_ with him." She lifted her head, and even in the barely-lessened dark Crawly could see that she had a split lip.

He blessed, viciously.

"You know what I think?" she whispered, her voice weak and raspy.

"Wot?"

"I think – if this alleged deluge of Noah's is real – you shouldn't go back to Hell for it, when it comes."

He didn't follow. "What, you think I should just discorporate?"

"It's like the end of the world, right? Chaos." She rubbed the side of her face against the blanket, pulling it more tightly around herself. "The end of everything. If it ever _does_ happen, that is, and who knows if it will. But that's right, isn't it?"

"Yeah..."

"So, in the madness, why not do something for yourself? Why not run away?"

"Run away, where?"

"Go outside and look _up_ – it's a big universe."

He said, then, what he'd never have admitted to anyone else. "On my _own_?"

"No. You needn't be alone." She grew wistful and serious all at once. "Take _him_ with you."

She couldn't mean... "Who...?"

"Your second."

He didn't say Aziraphale's name; walls had ears. "There's something wrong with you, d'you realise that?"

Bithiah wasn't fazed. "Satan doesn't love you," she said; "he never will." She shifted under the blanket, groaning lightly as she moved feet that were, doubtless, all pins and needles. "I truly believe you'd be happier around someone who _might_. Someday. You could be best friends, given half a chance."

There was enough light in the room by then for them to see each other's faces properly. She was so very pale – she looked like hell, no pun intended – and he knew he wasn't much better.

The room looked the same as he remembered, although it was missing some of the furnishings – perhaps broken, during his absence, by Bithiah's clumsy giant son. There was a new wall-hanging, however, done in Bithiah's own familiar style of stitchery.

This hanging depicted, in fine embroidery and careful cross-stitch, an enormous apple tree burdened with the most luscious, heavy red apples imaginable – even more tempting than the real ones had been – and an impossibly long black snake with a red underbelly and questioning yellow eyes was in its twisting branches.

"Hastur must have _loved_ that," snorted Crawly.

"He _did_ , actually," Bithiah told him. "Reminded him why I was here – why he bothers with me – why he married me in the first place."

A thought occurred to Crawly. "Do you _know_?"

"That it was you who saved me from drowning when I was a child?"

"Yeah, _that_." It both relieved and saddened him that she was aware of this. "How long have you–?"

"A few years now – I worked it all out."

"Bithiah, I–"

"Listen. There's something..." Her gaze shifted from the wall-hanging to him, then back again. "If... If anything ever happens to me... I want you to have that – to _keep_ it."

"Nothing's going to happen to you," he snorted.

"You don't know that," she said, rather darkly. "All it takes is one thing to go wrong and everything around us would _crumble_. Something could happen to either one of us, Crawly." Her elbow sticking out from under the blanket at a bent angle suggested she had pressed her hand to her heart. "Demon, human. Remarkable how little difference that actually makes, isn't it? Hell could destroy either one of us, with a single _word_ , and we'd just _let_ them."

"S'not the same thing," argued Crawly, a little weakly. "You always had free will. You chose this."

"Oh, poor Crawly," she whispered, almost pityingly. "You really think that, don't you?" She blinked compassionately. "And you chose this life the same as I did."

"I thought..." he choked, wondering if it was safe to say it, safe to speak of – even obscurely – Heaven's rebellion in this house. "I thought it would be different."

"As did I."

There was silence between them after that, nothing else to be said, until finally Bithiah added, "Just..." She waved her hand at the wall-hanging. " _Keep_ that, all right?"

And he promised he would.

* * *

Not long after, Bithiah announced that she was with child again. She told Crawly first, but he'd already worked that out when he saw her retching over a clay pot, so it wasn't much of a surprise to him.

"Hastur will be pleased," he said, though he wasn't sure of that, suspecting that the duke of Hell was also growing bored with the whole concept of these Nephilim babies in general.

There was always the chance, now that his youngest was fourteen, Hastur wouldn't want another monster baby crawling around and breaking things – especially given Bithiah's already proven penchant for trying to keep them in the household rather than send them away.

"Mmm," she'd replied, rather distantly.

Crawly darted a glance out the window; Bithiah's son was in the courtyard, lifting up stones with his bare hands and re-stacking them as a sort of game. "He'll have another brother."

Bithiah chewed on the inside of her cheek and fiddled with the ends of her long, dark hair; she looked as if she were debating how to say something, how to put into words an awful thing she could no longer keep to herself. "Or a sister."

"I told you, Hastur only has–"

" _Crawly_." She reached out and squeezed his hand. "I'm only going to say this _once_. The child might be female."

A recent memory stirred in the back of Crawly's mind, of Ligur leaving Hastur's study with a nasty smirk on his face and Bithiah obviously having been crying, her facial features raw and puffy, when Crawly found her there ten minutes later and dutifully escorted her back to her own part of the house.

Where Hastur was during this, he couldn't recall. Not that he'd have stopped it.

At the time, Crawly hadn't given it much thought – Ligur had never been kind to Bithiah, so an unpleasant exchange between the two was far from abnormal.

He jerked his hand away. "Fuck!"

Numbly, she met his eyes, then looked away and picked up her latest sewing, refusing – now that he'd gotten her meaning, now that he _understood_ – to say another word about it.

* * *

A few months passed and Crawly woke one night to someone with an impossible amount of upper-body strength brutally shaking his shoulder. They'd probably shatter all his bones and discorporate him if they kept it up much longer.

"Uncle Crawly! Uncle Crawly!"

Technically, he wasn't supposed to be sleeping – none of the other demons slept (which, he thought, might explain why they were always so damnably cranky), but sometimes he sneaked in an hour or two's nap during the dead of night.

Rolling over, he did his best to swat the Nephilim boy's beefy hand off himself and push his dishevelled red curls away from his face. " _Wot_? Wot's t'matter?"

"Something's wrong with Mother."

Coming fully awake, he raced alongside the giant child to Bithiah's bedside, where he found her curled up and motionless and exceedingly pale.

"She won't wake up." Whatever he'd been trying to wake her up for at this ungodly (pardon the term) hour Crawly never learned.

"Bithiah...?" The demon peeled back the covers, blessing copiously when he saw the spreading bloodstains.

There was a _thud_ that shook the room like an earthquake. The Nephilim boy had fainted.

She wasn't dead, Crawly was relieved to discover, finding a pulse and getting the smallest fluttering response from her rolled-back eyes when he spoke to her.

But she'd lost the baby.

There were moments when Crawly wondered if it had truly been accidental – Bithiah had trouble conceiving children, so it wasn't much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude she could have some struggles carrying them as well and her one reasonably healthy son might have been a fluke, a mere stroke of luck – or if she'd helped it along in some way.

He never could bring himself to ask her, though, not even when he knew they were alone.

There were some things which simply didn't bear speaking of, some questions even an insatiably curious being like Crawly would rather _not_ know the answer to.

* * *

_3018 B.C._

"Take that," Hastur ordered, pointing at a large black vase with a gold, ruby-crusted rim. "Oh, and that..." He indicated a poorly-rendered painting of what might have been a monkey.

"Really now, Hastur, what are you going to do with _that_?" Crawly demanded, as Hastur's eldest son ignored this and just started roughly picking up everything his father had indicated. "It's complete shit."

"I'll burn it for warmth," Hastur chuckled gutturally.

Hastur could have lit a pile of wet logs and they'd have caught fire – he was a _demon_ – setting fires wasn't exactly a struggle for them. He was only doing this because he liked that his enormous sons could take anything they wanted from anyone they pleased.

This sort of thing had been happening a lot that year. The demons, most of them as bored now as Hastur had already been getting two years prior, had found new entertainment in setting their monster children, all freakishly large adults now, on various houses and marketplaces and having them just start hurting people and snatching things.

Crawly – because Hastur picked up on the fact that he _wanted_ to be left behind with Bithiah, that he didn't _like_ watching them do this – kept getting dragged along for the show.

"Bet you wish you'd had a son now, don't you, Crawly?" mocked Hastur, lifting his left arm in a dramatic gesture, indicating the length and width of the house. "Now I can have anything I want."

He didn't bother mentioning that Hastur could have – in many cases – gotten anything he wanted _without_ the aid of a giant human-demon hybrid. People had been paying him tribute for decades. No good mentioning that to someone like Hastur. He enjoyed the instantaneousness and violence too much to understand none of it was actually necessary.

It had nearly broken Bithiah's heart that _her_ son was being made to do this as well – that it wasn't only the older two.

At the moment, her son was in the next room ripping gold decorations off the walls – _clank, bang, clank, bang_ – and stuffing them into a sack to be proudly presented to his father at the end of the glorious excursion.

Hastur's oldest son had snatched the vase and painting and was walking out the door – in rather an awkward sideways motion – with them both.

A man – tall for a human, but nothing to the Nephilim's exaggerated height – inched slowly until he was blocking the way.

"Don't–" began Crawly, too late.

Less than a minute later, the man – in shock, sans one arm – was sprawled out in a pool of his own blood, staring up imploringly at Hastur and Crawly, mouthing " _Why_?" as if it were the only word he still remembered how to form with his mouth. "Why? Why? _Why_?"

All this over a second-rate vase and a smudgy monkey painting that looked like it had been done by a five year old with fat fingers.

A woman – perhaps the wife of the man whose arm had just gotten ripped off – ducked into an empty alcove, hoping to escape Hastur's notice. She didn't. The alcove burst into flames, and she screamed as her garment caught fire.

Crawly sincerely hoped the couple didn't have any children who would come home at the end of the day to find their dead one-armed father and the ashes of their mother.

He didn't ask Hastur why he'd picked them – he knew, unlike in the case of Bithiah, there _was_ no reason.

There was no reason for _any_ of this.

* * *

"Don't wear that." Crawly motioned at the gold necklace with an unevenly cut onyx stone dangling from it as a pendant around Bithiah's neck.

"Why not?" Her fingers reached up and trailed along the length of the chain. "It was a gift from my so–" She noticed his expression, the dilated eyes and flared nostrils. "Oh."

"I saw him take that – its former owner was a girl his own age."

" _Was_? Is she...?" Bithiah's voice quavered.

" _Dead_?" Crawly's brow lifted. "Yesss, I expect ssso."

Reaching behind her neck with fumbling fingers, Bithiah unclasped the necklace and set it down.

Crawly never saw it on her again.

* * *

"Oh, well, I _must_ say, this is looking splendid – simply _splendid_ – you've got more than half the ark built," Aziraphale commended, smiling warmly at Noah as, side by side, they walked the length – over four-hundred feet – of the construction site and admired the work. "Jolly good. Everything's tip-top."

"If only the preaching work were going as well," lamented Noah. "People laugh mostly. A few do listen, for a moment or two, then decide to get back to their buying and selling and marrying as if it were as much of a joke as all the others seem to think it is."

"Oh dear." Aziraphale placed a hand on Noah's hunched shoulder. "Well. I'm sure you're doing your best. Your family is doing the right thing, at least."

"Did you hear about the Men of Renown raiding houses and carrying off whatever their demonic fathers order them to?"

The angel flinched; indeed, he _had_ heard. "Ah. Bad business, that. _Terrible_. Breaking into those poor peoples' homes!"

"I've heard people are following their example." Noah's ageing face creased in pain. "Stories are everywhere, saying that any number of copycat raids have been taking place. Even children – admiring these powerful giants – are... It's said they've been hurting one another, stealing and wounding small animals, and..." He found himself unable to go on. "And to _think_ , when we began building the ark, my family and I already supposed things were as bad as they could possibly _get_."

"Er... I couldn't help noticing..." Aziraphale put in nervously, stopping in his tracks and turning around at the waist to look at Noah. "That is... Shem goes to the marketplace by himself for more supplies, from time to time. I don't suppose... I mean, it's quite _safe_ for him, isn't it?"

"What choice does he have?" Noah sighed. "There are only eight of us – his brothers can't always go with him. Not every time. Not if we expect this ark to ever be build. And he doesn't like the thought of putting his wife in danger by bringing _her_ along."

"I can't blame him for that."

"Aziraphale, when... When it's time... God expects us to bring in two of each animal... I... I expect the Almighty will direct these various creatures our way?" He looked at the angel sidelong. "Unicorns, for example. You realise those beasts are not exactly _local_? No one here has ever _seen_ one, let alone handled one."

"There's no need to worry," he told him, placing one hand on an unfinished portion of the ark and running his fingers down the side in a pensive manner. "I'm quite certain the Almighty has thought of all that – it's all bound to work out fine when the time comes. Ooh... _Ouch..._!"

"Are you all right?"

Somewhat sheepishly, Aziraphale held up his hand. "Splinter."

* * *

Bithiah set aside her sewing for the day and began to fold a pile of newly-mended oversized garments. "I don't know how he tears through them so quickly – giant strength or not, that was a bloody _triple stitch_. How did he manage to _split_ that? That son of mine. Some days I could just shake him senseless."

Sprawled across a divan on the other side of the sitting room, one arm draped over his face, Crawly let out a lazy yawn. " _Eh_?"

"Have you noticed Noah's ark's about half-built now?"

"Where did _that_ come from?" He sat up, staring over at her and gripping the underside of the divan with splayed, white knuckles.

"I've been thinking a great deal about drowning lately – worries me, that's all."

"Bithiah, there's nothing we can–"

"I _know_ , Crawly – I'm just saying."

"Well, I suppose, if there was no ark..." Crawly mused, beginning to wonder why the thought had never occurred to him until this moment. "There would be no flood until a new one got built. It would give humanity more time to get over themselves."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying something could _happen_ to it."

"You wouldn't–" she began, as if afraid he really _would_ and suddenly unsure that was what she wanted, what she'd meant by bringing it up.

"Well, maybe not me _personally_." He released his grip, casually tossing an arm sideways over the headrest. "Someone could have it _suggested_ to them."

* * *

In the dusky twilight, a large black snake slithered out from behind a boulder. The snake drew himself up to an impressive height, aligning his mouth with the ear of a man who'd been – with mean, squinting eyes, already intending some mischief or other – watching the ark from a distance.

"Go on..." hissed the snake. "You know you _want_ to."

The man reached for a rock, probably to try and bash the snake's head in. " _Serpent_!" he spat.

"You _could_ hit me – try to crush my head in with a blow – or you could do what you _really_ want to."

And that was that.

Within the next twenty minutes, the ark was aflame, and a red-haired demon was watching from the trees, basking in the literal glow of a bad job well done.

"Yup, I've still got it," he declared smugly to himself.

* * *

With ash-blackened faces, Noah and his family hauled buckets of water and began hurling them at the burning ark.

Noah's wife thrust a damp cloth over the sizzling, dripping tar.

Coughing spastically into his sleeve, Ham rushed in and rescued most of the tools, although one box of this precious resource had already been reduced to nothing.

"It's hopeless," he cried, dropping the boxes he'd managed to save into his weeping wife's waiting hands. "We're going to lose the ark – all that work, _gone_. Like it never was!"

Hearing his brother say this, Shem fell onto his knees, hard.

"Shem, _look_!" Grasping his shoulder, his wife pointed to a rising mist, coming up from the earth and spraying a film of water over all of the burning wood. Under the glowing, spreading water, the wild orange-red fire turned a pale, soft blue, and then fizzed away. "God be praised – it's a miracle!"

* * *

Aziraphale sat rigidly beside the pond. It was the same one he and Crawly had gotten drunk at all those years before. Only it was daytime now, the water wasn't glowing, and instead of a school of beautiful fish, there were a couple of very aggressive ducks – big drakes, the both of them – fighting viciously over a handful of bread crumbs the angel had absent-mindedly tossed them.

Even the _ducks_ were getting violent, thought the angel miserably. What an ugly, ugly world. He brushed an imaginary smearing of soil off the lower part of his pristine garment and began to stand.

"Angel."

He tensed, clenching and unclenching his fists, broadly splaying his fingers. He knew who it was, even before he spoke, and he was _furious_ with him.

"About...er...you know... _Listen_."

"No!" He spun around and glared at the demon, arms crossed. "What you did was _wrong_."

Crawly groaned. "It wasn't even _me_ , if you want to get technical about it."

"Absolutely unbelievable."

In a hasty, almost panicked – and very likely not thought through – gesture, Crawly reached out to stop Aziraphale leaving without hearing his explanation. "I–"

Angrily, the principality shoved him away and pushed past him, ignoring the startled look beginning to spread across the demon's face.

" _Aziraphale_."

"You've gone too far, Crawly. This was too much." And after what he'd done for him – looking after Bithiah in his absence! Not that _Crawly_ cared if Heaven found out and was upset with him.

"Come on," begged the demon. "Be reasonable. I only–"

Aziraphale's wounded eyes stared daggers into his. "I'll never talk to you again."

And Crawly – as he visibly came to the slow, impossibly bitter realisation the angel meant it, actually bloody _meant_ it – opened his mouth to say something else defensive...to keep talking...to keep Aziraphale talking...

And then – seemingly for no discernable reason – he let it all go. "Right, then. Have a nice flood."


	4. Part 4 of 6

_The Book of Bithiah_

A _Good Omens_ fanfiction

Part **4** of **6**

_Mesopotamia, 3016 B.C._

The tavern was full, much to Aziraphale's mounting frustration. Crowds clocking in at _this_ level of density usually meant one thing – there were Nephilim nearby. You couldn't go much of anywhere those days, it seemed, _without_ bumping into one of those big, lumbering hybrid bullies.

Aziraphale knew he probably should have just gone back to his dwelling and tried again another time, but he'd had a very long day, and all he wanted was some _good_ wine – the kind they sold here, the genuine article, entirely unlike the inferior knock-offs in the marketplace, all raised to an ungodly price per jug thanks to these brutes and their raids – and a nice hot, flaky pie.

He could _miracle_ a passably flaky crust over some dried fruit he had stored back at his dwelling, perhaps, and turn his subpar wine into something less vinegary and more acceptable, but it really wasn't the _same_.

Surely it would be all right if he just sort of nudged a couple of arms aside and made his way to the front, thought the angel. That wouldn't be a problem, wouldn't incur anybody's wrath, would it? Surely _not_?

The further inside he got, however, the more certain he became that he was making a dreadful mistake.

There was that smell – that raw demonic stench laced with sulphur – all about this place.

And it was only getting _stronger_.

He tried not to inhale too deeply as he took slow, careful breaths, too far in already – unfortunately – to turn around and leave empty-handed, even if he _wanted_ to.

"Excuse me, there's a fine chap, thank you." The angel made his way to the barman's worktop, surrounded by high, wide chairs, and stretched over someone seated there, brushing – almost imperceptibly – against the side of their rock-hard arm. He snapped his finger rapidly. "Ah, yes, I would _like_ –"

"That was my _son_ ," said a deep, hellish voice.

"Er, I'm sorry, what was that?" Aziraphale inclined his head slightly, still looking at the tavern owner behind the raised worktop; he was a bit irritated over being interrupted before he could say what he wanted.

"I said, that was my _son_ you bumped, wank-wings."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Aziraphale turned and looked at Hastur, duke of Hell, witheringly. "I didn't bump him! My sleeve merely brus–"

Hastur grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back, twisting his plump wrist.

"Unhand me!" demanded Aziraphale, indignant, wrenching free.

"Son." Hastur turned to the man the angel's sleeve had grazed. "Did this idiotic angel bump you?"

"Yeah," said the Nephilim, "that's right. That's what happened."

"Come now, really," protested Aziraphale, in an aggravated huff. "You know perfectly well I did no such thing! I only came in here to buy–"

The tavern owner had vanished, leaving them to it; the other customers, apparently, could bugger off for all he cared, lest he get caught up in the readily brewing supernatural brawl.

"But we say you _did_." The duke of Hell's voice went from guttural to oily – hardly a good sign. "Don't we, son?"

Hastur's son rose up, towering over the rest of the crowd.

"Oh, good lord," muttered Aziraphale, rolling his eyes and struggling to recall _which_ son of Hastur's this was – they all looked the same to him, these Nephilim, except for maybe the _girls_ , who were even uglier. "He's a _big_ one." He smiled tightly at Hastur, pointing up at his gigantic offspring. "Jolly good job. I'm sure you're quite proud of him. Now, if you don't mind, I do believe I'll–"

"You think" – and Ligur, the other duke of Hell, was suddenly there, too, blocking, flanking him on the other side – "we're just going to let you disrespect us and _leave_?"

"Discorporate the bastard," Hastur told his son, almost offhandedly, with a short snap of his dry, flickering fingers. "He's annoying me."

The Nephilim cracked his knuckles.

"Now, now, let's be reasonable, shall we?" Aziraphale tried, staggering backwards. "This is hardly _sporting_ – he's...well...obviously... _err_..."

"He's right, Hastur, it's not a fair match – leave him alone." The voice was female, weary. "There's no point."

Aziraphale looked for the voice and saw Bithiah, who had been sitting beside Hastur's son, hidden by his bulk, gingerly nursing a goblet of wine. When the Nephilim had risen from his seat, Aziraphale hadn't thought to look around him – too distracted by his incredible height. So, he realised then, _that_ was which son of Hastur's it was – _hers_. Oh, poor thing.

"Oh, Bithiah, hello." Aziraphale nodded to her, then glanced back at her son with the flaring nostrils and her glowering demonic husband. "Good Heavens. I'm so sorry."

She shrugged one shoulder.

"Nonsense – I've been waiting to put this fat angel in his place for a long time," Hastur told her. "Don't think I didn't notice him following you around for the last decade."

"Taking improper liberties," Ligur added.

" _Improper liberties_?" spluttered Aziraphale, nonplussed. "You mean like saying _hello_ to her on occasion?"

"Made yourself scarce these last couple of years," Hastur admitted, "but don't think I've _forgotten_."

"We don't forget," snapped Ligur.

"That's my _mother_ ," growled the Nephilim.

"Love, don't–"

He pointed at her. "Stay out of this, Mother – Father and me are handling it."

"Father and _I_ ," Aziraphale blurted.

"What're you talking about?" grunted the giant. "He's not _your_ father."

" _Amazing_ ," muttered Aziraphale, sarcastically.

"Crawly," said Hastur next, and – accompanied by the sound of a stool a couple tables down scraping the floor – the demon Aziraphale hadn't spoken to for the past two years, ever-true to his bitter promise, turned around.

Aziraphale tried desperately not to be happy to see him. He had to remind himself he was most certainly _not_ happy to see him, that he _loathed_ him, especially after he tempted that volatile man to burn the ark, spoiling all of Noah's hard work.

You couldn't be happy to see somebody who would do a thing like that. It was a simple impossibility.

So he scowled, and Crawly – apparently taking the silent judgement and rejection exactly the way Aziraphale meant for him to – glowered back with wide amber eyes, setting his goblet down.

"Wot?"

"Fight him," ordered Hastur.

"I beg your pardon?" blurted Aziraphale.

Hastur's brow lifted. "You can't fight my son, but surely an angel can fight a demon – natural enemies, even match."

"Oh dear."

"Fight him yourself," snapped Crawly.

Bithiah gasped and clamped her hands over her mouth.

Hastur didn't take the refusal well, his black irises swirling like dark, still water that had been disturbed by an errant pebble. "You have exactly _one second_ , Crawly, to get up – find yourself a bloody sword – and cut out this fat angel's tongue before I make you swallow _yours_."

"You can take him, uncle!" said Bithiah's son, pumping his large fist upwards encouragingly.

"Of course he can," sneered Hastur. "Look at that angel; soft as a pin cushion."

Rising obediently, Crawly grit his teeth, accepting a – rather oversized – sword from another Nephilim on his right. "Right. Let's get this over with."

Aziraphale felt the blood draining from his face. He didn't want this. Not because he was afraid he'd lose – whatever Hastur said, the odds were actually in his favour, as he strongly suspected Crawly, despite being slimmer and quicker, might not be the better swordsman of the two of them – but for exactly the opposite reason.

What if he _hurt_ him? Or, God forbid, discorporated him?

Perish the thought!

He and Crawly had fought each other before, once or twice, but it had been sparingly and petered out as quickly as they could manage to fake it. Besides, that had been hand-to-hand fighting; wrestling. A creature that could slither and coil and choke the life out of its opponent obviously had the upper-hand in that sort of thing.

Only, this... This was quite _different_.

Aziraphale had had extensive sword training, little enough cause though he had to use it these days. During the war sparked by the rebellion he'd been in charge of his own platoon. Crawly...? As for poor Crawly, Aziraphale had no idea what he'd been – he never spoke of it – but there were certain movements natural to trained swordsmen he'd _never_ seen Crawly display, even in the heat of a disagreement, and – in this situation – that _worried_ him.

It worried him a _lot_.

His fingers closed around a hilt as somebody pressed a sword – thinner and shorter than Crawly's – into his shaking hand.

Aziraphale cleared his throat and steadied himself. It wouldn't do any good to let Crawly – if he were capable of such a thing – slice him from mouth to belly, either. Certainly, a demon who could burn an ark that was humanity's only chance for survival from the coming deluge could slit open one measly angel at the first lucky strike. Particularly an angel who had snubbed him for two years, who had cut him dead every time their paths crossed.

And yet he couldn't really make himself believe Crawly would hurt him. Not _willingly_.

The crowd, taking tables and chairs and stools with them, thinned in a circular formation around them, giving them room enough to duel but not to run away.

"I warn you," Aziraphale tried, bobbing his head earnestly, "Heaven will hear about this, and Gabriel will not be–"

"Oh," Hastur grinned, nudging a snickering Ligur, "I'm counting on it." To Crawly, he added, "Now hurry up and discorporate him; we haven't got all day."

Crawly grunted and began circling him.

"Oh, f–" Aziraphale bit it back with force. " _Fiddlesticks_."

"Go on! Slice his head off, uncle!"

" _That_!" snapped Aziraphale, over his shoulder. "Is really not very _nice_." In a loud mutter he added, "Honestly! Behaving like you were raised by an incredibly uncultured–"

" _Ahem_ ," coughed Bithiah.

"Oh, terribly sorry." The angel felt his cheeks heat up.

Crawly lunged.

Yelping in surprise before the old moves came back to him and his hand automatically raised his own sword and blocked the demon, Aziraphale staggered several steps back.

Crawly's brow lifted; he tried again, and Aziraphale blocked him again, spun halfway, and – arching forward – let their swords meet loudly.

With a grunt, Crawly ducked, using his speed to go under Aziraphale's blade in a mad attempt to slash at his legs and trip him up. But the principality hopped to the side. Crawly got nothing but air. He raised the sword again, banging it frantically against the angel's.

Aziraphale was doing quite well for himself until he tripped and his hand was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Crawly's blade made a clean slice across the top of his hand; it beaded red, and then it was a streaming crimson slash.

For some reason Aziraphale and the onlookers alike couldn't fathom, Crawly didn't immediately follow up on this and win. Instead he _stared_. Stared like looking at the wound, at the blood trickling down the angel's hand, had put him into a physical state of shock.

Aziraphale wanted – for the shortest of moments – to _comfort_ him. To assure Crawly it was only a scratch. It hurt, but not _a lot_. It wasn't a mortal wound, or even in a particularly delicate spot; it wasn't as if Crawly had just jabbed him under the ribs or driven the sword into his belly. No lasting harm _done_ , dear fellow.

Then he remembered. Remembered he loathed him. And doubly loathed _himself_ for forgetting it.

Instead, he coughed self-consciously.

Crawly snapped back to himself, aiming for Aziraphale's other arm.

"Just _stab_ him, uncle!" shouted Bithiah's son, not understanding why it wasn't over. "Go for the gut! The _gut_!"

" _Finish_ him, Crawly," growled Hastur.

"Poke him in the eye!" someone else yelled.

"Here! Hit him with _this_!" There was a banging clamour as somebody tossed what appeared to be a battered, heavily dented blacksmith's anvil into their circle.

"Now _really_!" exclaimed Aziraphale, blocking another of Crawly's blows as the anvil stopped just short of his right foot. "Would you _please_ stop _throwing_ things?" He sighed. "I think this has gone quite far enough." And he made a sudden slash at Crawly's wrist, grazing him. It barely broke the skin, and the blood was more minimal than what Crawly had done to _his_ hand, but it made the – rather surprised – demon bless and drop his sword, disarming him.

Aziraphale stepped on the thick hilt and pulled his weight so that most of his bulk was blocking the demon from picking it up and resuming their duel. "No, no. Don't! You've lost. I've disarmed you. It's over. What a _relief_!"

Crawly's eyes darted to Hastur, who was fuming. "No. No, it isn't, Azirpahale. Not at all." He gnashed his teeth. "It doesn't work that simply."

Huffing, Aziraphale tried to step around him, but Hastur and his son closed ranks.

Before Hastur could grab Aziraphale, Crawly's hand snagged him from behind, yanked him away, and began shoving him against the nearest wall. Realising that Crawly was deliberately preventing his head from dashing against the wall as he slammed him, Aziraphale felt himself relax, almost involuntarily. In that moment he was certain – issues between them notwithstanding – Crawly wasn't going to hurt him. There was only so far the demon could bring himself to take it. And it was obvious _why_ he'd done it. Hastur, if he'd gotten his hands him, would not have been anywhere near so conscientious. The Nephilim son would have smashed his head like he was trying to get juice from a melon.

Leaning in close, Crawly hissed, "Unless you want me to discorporate you, you need to use a miracle and get yourself out of here! _Now_ , angel!"

"I really am dreadfully sorry about this," murmured Aziraphale, looking away shamefaced despite everything, as he reached out and touched Crawly's jawline.

Crawly retched, and then he gagged. Something was obstructing his throat. A mouthful of white flower petals and tiny feathers resembling what came off moulted chickens, covered in bile, forced their way out and landed on the floor. He coughed violently, landing on all fours as the last of the crumpled petals tumbled out.

Aziraphale vanished before Crawly was back on his feet, looking for him.

* * *

"What was _that_?" demanded Hastur.

"Stupid principality miracled himself–" Crawly wiped bile off the corner of his mouth.

The duke of Hell struck him across the face. "I don't _trust_ you, Crawly."

* * *

Looking out over the courtyard, Bithiah had the wall-hanging she'd told Crawly to keep if anything happened to her spread across her lap, sewing new, fresh running-stitches around the hem.

Coming up and sitting down beside her, Crawly gestured at it. "What's this about?"

"The old stitches weren't holding." She shrugged.

"That's not like you." Normally, the only time Bithiah's stitches came loose were when her son ran his carefully-sewn clothing ragged. Nothing she made as a household decoration ever deteriorated that Crawly had noticed, and yet this was the second occasion upon which he'd caught her sewing up the edges of the wall-hanging.

"Don't be ridiculous, Crawly." She broke the end of the thread with her teeth. "Nothing lasts forever. Just because you don't see the maintenance it takes doesn't mean it never _happens_."

Crawly glanced curiously at the courtyard – Bithiah's son, as well as Hastur's other sons, were play-wrestling with one of Ligur's perpetually scowling, dark-skinned daughters. "D'you think something will come of that?"

"What, you mean my son and Ligur's girl?"

He nodded.

She folded the wall-hanging and placed her hands in her lap over it. "I imagine it would please Hastur, and I've got no objections to seeing them happy, but somehow I can't..."

"Me either," Crawly admitted, stretching carelessly. "But, I mean, it's not _bad_ , I don't think – they're of the same stock, and it's not as if it's likely they'll be able to have _children_."

"How do you mean?"

"Hybrids... Born of demon and human... Probably like mules, amirite?"

"How _is_ it," Bithiah demanded with an exasperated pout, "you know about mules, but you don't understand that gorillas make nests?"

He pulled a face. "I still say they _don't_."

* * *

_3009 B.C._

The day started out like most others did. Crawly went about his usual, sickeningly tedious routine in Hastur's household, never having a second thought about how the day would end, or considering that anything might change.

And then, about quarter past noon, Bithiah's midday meal was interrupted by Hastur barging into her sitting room – a place he'd rarely entered. Usually he had _her_ come to _him_. All about that ever-important power balance. The idea of being in a place where Bithiah was, more or less, at home did not give the duke of Hell much satisfaction. He liked it better when she was uncomfortable in his study, or eating slowly and carefully with him on the reclining cushions with Ligur or other demonic guests. It wasn't that he'd _never_ come here – he had, of course. To make _sure_ Bithiah knew every room in this house was _his_ , even if he'd generously given her the run of it, if nothing else. Just very infrequently, was all.

He said nothing to Crawly, who was refilling Bithiah's half-empty wine goblet. " _Hastur_."

Hastur grunted, walking over to Bithiah and gripping the bottom of her face and turning it left and right, like he was a doctor examining it for signs of an illness or rash.

Crawly's fingers, gone oddly scaly and dark-coloured, tensed and coiled around the jug he held; it was a wonder the earthenware crockery did not shatter under the increasing pressure.

"Pity." Hastur let go of Bithiah's face. "You used to be such a pretty thing, _once_."

After that, Hastur took his leave, banging the doors disruptively behind himself.

Bithiah's eyes filled with tears. "Crawly?"

"Yeah?"

"He's going to dismiss me, isn't he?"

The pain was almost unbearable, and yet Crawly had been anticipating it for some time now.

There was, so far as he thought, nothing wrong with how Bithiah looked – she was still pretty in his opinion – but he was not stupid enough to assume that what _he_ saw when he looked at the duchess of Hell was anything like what _Hastur_ saw.

All the same, why did this knowledge, this grudging admission, _hurt_ so bloody much? Why could he barely push it pass his teeth in a wounded hiss?

"Yes," he mumbled, meeting her broken gaze.

"How long have I got?" she whispered, her throat constricting on the tail-end of the question, making her voice break off.

"A _day_ , at most."

"My son–" she choked out.

"You can forget about seeing him again, once you're out of the house," Crawly told her. "Hastur would never allow it."

She bit down hard on her lower lip and nodded.

"I'm so sorry."

"Should I..." She inhaled deeply. "Should I _go_ to him? Offer to let Hastur do whatever he wants, if he'll change his mind?"

Crawly wasn't sure that would do any good. After all, Hastur could _already_ do anything he wanted to her – and _had_. She had nothing to bargain with. Then again, neither did _he_ , and yet he was planning on approaching Hastur in his study later and doing everything short of literally begging him not to dismiss Bithiah.

"I'll talk to him," Crawly said finally. "I don't think it'll change his mind, but I'll talk to him."

* * *

"What'dda want, Crawly?" Hastur was sitting at his polished table. He barely glanced up, his black eyes utterly uninterested.

"You can't just toss Bithiah out."

"Oh, _can't_ I now?" A tight smile spread across his face.

"She's your _wife_ , Hastur!"

"She's _currently_ my wife, that can be changed." The duke of Hell pushed back his chair and rose up. "And soon will."

"What do you want from me?" Crawly sighed. "Whatever it is–"

"I don't want _anything_ from you, Crawly." His brow was lifted. "I've enjoyed your reaction to her being here immensely. You've given me what I wanted from you already, many times over. _Thank you_."

"Right, and so now you're–"

"Done with her," he said coldly. "She's all used up. Old and saggy, all worn out. She'll never give me another son. We both know that."

"You don't _need_ any more sons."

"It's never been about need."

No, Crawly thought bitterly, it's been about tormenting _me_ , hasn't it?

"Is this because of that time I knocked the cue-cards down during your presentation in Hell?"

Hastur's brow furrowed angrily. "That was you?"

"Er... _Nooo_. Not at all – I just wondered, you know, _if_ it had been me, if that was why–"

" _Crawly_..."

"Because I never did that."

"It's _over_ , Crawly – that's it."

"But Bithiah–"

" _But Bithiah_ ," mocked Hastur in a bad impression of Crawly's voice, sitting back down, and stretched his legs under the table with a contented groan. "You're a _demon_ , Crawly, try _acting_ like it once in a while."

* * *

Bithiah was woken from sleep by a familiar hand gently shaking her shoulder.

" _Crawly_ ," she murmured, registering his presence nonchalantly and preparing to roll over and go back to sleep.

He shook her again. "I'm sorry, but Hastur says you need to leave now."

"It's the middle of the night." She was coming properly awake in a hurry, sitting up and looking at him in wide-eyed incredulity.

"I'll help as much as I can," he told her, keeping his voice low, "but if you don't leave with me, Hastur will send somebody else. And they won't be as polite about it."

"Ligur?" she asked with a light shudder.

"Possibly"

"You spoke to Hastur?"

"Earlier, yes, there was nothing I could do." Crawly pulled back the covers. "Come on, get up, get dressed. Don't take anything you don't have to."

Bithiah glanced from Crawly to the wardrobe, to the chest where her jewels were kept. She realized, then, that if she had been permitted to keep one thing from this room it would have been _him_ – she was going to miss him.

" _Hurry up_ ," he hissed urgently.

Dutifully she dressed, put on her plainest garment (it was hemmed with silver thread at the bottom but the luxury was minimal and the design far from elaborate), tied her long, dark hair back with a scrap of lace, and reached for a cloak.

Her eyes darted to Crawly questioningly.

He'd turned away while she was changing, but looking back now, seeing what she was silently asking, he nodded.

She slipped the cloak over herself and lifted the hood over her head. Then she began to fasten her oldest pair of sandals to her feet. "Where will I go?"

"I don't know." Crawly reached for an oil lamp – he made a motion to hand it to Bithiah, but her hands were shaking too badly to take it from him, so he held onto it.

"Can I kiss my son goodbye?" she whispered, as they left the room together with nothing.

"I don't think that would be a good idea."

Outside, the air was still and cool. There wasn't much moonlight, casting the roadways into darkness. There were smatterings of stars, but they seemed very far off, very cold.

* * *

Crawly, per Hastur's instructions, was supposed to just leave Bithiah outside, but of course he couldn't bring himself to do it. He guided her through the dark, through the rowdy crowds that never slept, to a small but respectable-looking (within reason) inn – where he demanded the innkeeper wake up immediately.

"Eh?" He rubbed at his eyes sleepily with the back of his wrist, seemingly barely seeing who he was addressing through the narrow, puffy slits of his filmy eyes. "Whaddya want?"

Gesturing at Bithiah, Crawly said, "Room, please – send any expenses to me."

The innkeeper, slowly coming awake and seeing them properly, shook his head. "Sorry, mate. Had instructions not to take her in – and I was meant, if you showed up at her side..." Here he had to pause and gulp, perhaps afraid the demon would take it out on him. "I was meant to tell you to sod off."

"Uggh!" Crawly groaned, tossing back his head in frustration. " _Hastur_!"

"I can't go against his orders," the innkeeper added hurriedly. "Dukes of Hell have got the power to shut this place down permanently. And things haven't been nice and easy since the last time the Men of Renown rai– I mean, that is, paid an honoured visit to our establishment..."

"Oh, he thinks he's so _clever_!" snapped Crawly, whirling around and taking Bithiah by the arm, wrinkling the side of her cloak. "Well, let's see about this."

They tried four other inns – one of which Bithiah insisted upon because it was somewhat rundown and might have escaped Hastur's notice but Crawly didn't approve of her potentially staying in anyway, and two of which stank like a piss-pot left out uncovered on a hot day – with roughly the same results.

Crawly strongly considered forcing the innkeeper of the last inn that seemed mostly all right (clean sheets and didn't smell of piss or excrement) to stare deeply into his eyes so that he could hypnotize him into doing what he wanted. The problem was, if Hastur already had his eye on this place, and shut it down out of spite the way the innkeepers clearly feared he would, Bithiah would be on the street again the moment he got around to it.

Total waste of a perfectly good demonic miracle, Crawly regretfully admitted to himself. Damn shame, too.

"It's no good," sighed Bithiah at last, resigned. "You'll have to leave me outside somewhere. Hastur won't have it any other way."

"The Heaven I will," he hissed.

"But there's nowhere else."

Crawly tensed. "There's _one_ other place."

They walked in circles for so long he was sure Bithiah was wondering about his sanity and doubtless concluding he had precious little of it left – in her place, that was what he'd have been thinking – but once he was certain no one was watching them, that they weren't being followed, that they'd warded off any interesting persons – as well as demons waiting to report back to Hastur – with their boring, repetitive, circular stroll, he took her to Aziraphale's.

* * *

Aziraphale was astonished to see Crawly and a shivering Bithiah outside of his dwelling, but he nervously ushered them in despite this. He didn't look at Crawly for as long as their locked gazes could be avoided. Their last interaction, after all, had been that rather unfortunate duel.

"You shouldn't be here," he said at last, icily, staring down at his fingernails.

"Come on," said Crawly, with a forced easiness to his voice. "Don't tell me you're still upset about that whole tempting some guy to burn the ark thing."

Aziraphale's eyes lifted. "Well, of _course_ I am!"

"I didn't discorporate you in that duel – that has to count for _something_."

It was difficult, seeing the obvious distress on Crawly's face and having to resolutely _ignore_ it. "The duel _I_ won, you mean."

"You did not!" exclaimed Crawly, indignant.

"Did so – I disarmed you."

Crawly made a choking noise of disgust.

"To be fair," Bithiah piped up, her voice soft and low, "Crawly got first blood."

There was, naturally, no scar on Aziraphale's hand, as he was an angel, but he caught himself looking down at the place where it would have been if he was mortal. "Why are you _here_?" he mumbled, rubbing a finger self-consciously against the back of his other hand.

"Hastur's cast Bithiah out," Crawly explained through clenched teeth. "She needs a place to stay."

"What?" blurted Aziraphale. " _Here_? No! Out of the question." His eyes landed on Bithiah, taking in the thin streaks of silver in her dark hair and the sorrowful, abandoned expression on her weary face. "I _am_ sorry, my dear girl, but really–"

"There's no place I can set her up safely – Hastur's seen to that." Crawly shrugged. "But he doesn't think I'd come to you."

"Yes, because we're supposed to be _enemies_!"

Bithiah snorted.

"What?" Aziraphale said, all innocence.

" _Enemies_ ," repeated Bithiah, as though she couldn't believe _that_ was what they were still going with. "He's practically your second."

"My _what_?" Aziraphale was stunned.

Bithiah paused, considering. "Do you _have_ another working partner? I know Crawly doesn't."

"Bithiah," snapped Crawly, his cheeks colouring bright pink. " _Shut up_."

"Well, no, not as such – sometimes I talk to..." Aziraphale began to go rather red himself. "Irregardless, we're hereditary enemies."

"Right," affirmed Crawly.

"We can't agree on anything."

"Damn straight," added Crawly, thoughtlessly, pausing and then scowling at Bithiah's lifted brow.

She was not, Aziraphale thought, taken in.

"I don't like him and he doesn't like me," Aziraphale continued, a touch desperate to make his point.

"Hang on. You don't like me?" Crawly sounded rather wounded. "What'd _I_ do?"

The angel began to splutter. "Y-you keep tempting humanity to do horrible things!"

"Oh. Yes, I guess there's that. But they don't have to say _yes_!"

"Wait, were you implying that _you_ like–" The coin had begun to drop for Aziraphale, though it hadn't quite reached its final destination. The change box of the angel's mind was a bit wider – though he'd never have admitted it to himself – than it had any right to be, given how clever he usually was.

"Never mind," Crawly interrupted quickly, interceding before the coin could properly _clink_ into place, and Aziraphale was forced to give up his puzzled musing entirely for the time being. "Listen. Bithiah needs a place to stay. At least for tonight."

"D'you realise what my side would do if they knew I was housing and feeding a Duchess of Hell?"

"You don't have to feed me," Bithiah put in.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, you're my guest, of course I do." Aziraphale waved that off with an irritable wrist flick. "Now, Crawly, you simply _must_ see sense and–"

"She _isn't_ a duchess of Hell any more, remember?"

This dropped rather a large girder in the path of the principality's line of comfortable logic. Because, of course, Crawly was right. When you really thought on it. If Hastur was well and truly done with Bithiah, it meant she was only a homeless woman who had fallen from disgrace, been cast aside. And, being an angel, Aziraphale could not merely pass by on the other side.

"Well..." He subsided, reason and pity winning out over his urgent need to avoid any trouble and to remain at odds with Crawly. "Now that you mention it... Heaven _couldn't_ object to giving an abandoned woman _shelter_."

"It'd be a real feather in your wing, you know," Crawly pressed, sniffing. "You might even get a commendation for it."

* * *

Crawly returned to Hastur's house at dawn, intending to collect what few things he owned, assuming now that Bithiah no longer lived within these walls Hastur had no need – or want – of his service.

He discovered, much to his chagrin, making him go all prickly, a young woman moving things about Bithiah's sitting room.

At first, Crawly took her for a servant, and was prepared to scold her for handling Bithiah's former belongings, then he noticed she wore a gaudy gold necklace with a familiar onyx stone and her garment was expensive-looking, consisting of gold-threaded hemlines and a number of flouncy pleats.

Not so much as turning to acknowledge him, she began to yank down Bithiah's wall-hanging – the one she'd wanted Crawly to keep.

"The Heaven d'you think you're doing?" he blurted with a cracked voice, despite knowing better, despite knowing Hastur would find a way to make him pay for speaking to his new bride – for that was what she was, though badness only knew when he'd found the time to marry her – disrespectfully.

"Getting rid," she said primly, over her heavily-scented shoulder, "of all this rubbish."

"That'sss _mine_ ," he said, and it wasn't entirely a _lie_ – not a _proper_ one, not like 'eat the apple, nothing bad will happen to you'.

"Take it, then – _I_ don't want it."

Crawly took it – the rubbing fabric made an oddly crinkly sound when he folded it over his arm. "Right. I'm off."

His path was blocked; Hastur stood in the doorway. "And where do you think _you're_ going, Mr. Slick?"

"Bithiah's gone," Crawly said simply.

"That doesn't mean you can just take off." Hastur motioned over at his bride, who was now fluffing her hair in front of a mirror and twirling in rather a trite manner. "The job hasn't changed."

"I'm not babysitting another grown woman, Hastur."

"Oh, you _are_ ," Hastur insisted; "until your replacement turns up and I tell you you're free to go."

"But there's no _point_ to this – I'm _done_ – I don't _care_ what you do to this one." He glanced over his shoulder. "No offence."

She shrugged. "None taken."

"I'll let you go" – Hastur smiled, ever so slowly – "you can leave this house today."

"Yeah?" Crawly almost dared to hope he meant it.

"As soon as you tell me where you took Bithiah."

 _Shit_. He ground his teeth together.

"Swallowed your tongue, have you?" mocked Hastur, taking a step nearer. "I could make you do that for _real_ , snake-man."

"I'll report you," Crawly blurted, his numb feet stumbling backwards. "Satan–"

"I'm a duke of Hell," he laughed. "And you think Satan will take your side over mine? That he'll even read your report? You're so _fucked_ , Crawly."

"Has-teeer," whined the new bride, her tone shrill and nasal. "I'm _booored_. There's nothing to do and I don't _like_ this demon you're taking to – he's got such ugly eyes."

Why, Crawly wondered, would Hastur have picked _this_ shrew? The other brides made sense – to a degree. They were all beautiful, desirable from a physical standpoint if you were perverted like that, which Hastur definitely was. And Bithiah had possessed the added bonus of meaning something to Crawly, of being the child he'd saved from drowning. This girl, on the other hand, was reasonably pretty, but she was astoundingly _less so_ than Bithiah. Even at forty-eight Bithiah's features were objectively nicer to look at than this young woman's. The only advantage this girl had was her obvious youth and the fact that her body hadn't gone to hell – no pun intended – giving birth to a monster child. Even if Hastur clearly wanted somebody younger, even if Bithiah had lost all appeal for him, he could have easily picked a more beautiful replacement. Demon marriages were still popular – all the local girls would have been delighted to be asked.

That was when Crawly noticed the new bride's wrists and the lower, inner parts of her arms were covered with overlapping lashes and scratches. Some looked fresh, like they could have been made in the last day or so, others were much older, close to fading.

When had the bastard even had time to do this?

"Does Hastur do this to you?" he asked – despite himself, despite Hastur being right there – reaching out and grasping one of her wrists, turning it over while she tried to wretch it free, shrieking for him not to touch her.

Hastur answered for her. "No, she does it to herself."

"Mind your own business!" she spat, as Crawly let go of her arm.

Ah, _right_. That explained a lot. A cutter. Somebody who _liked_ pain. Or at the very least used it as a personal release.

Hastur had never had one of those.

Bithiah might have steadfastly endured everything he'd done to her, but she could only pretend so convincingly to _enjoy_ it – even her best performance would have left Hastur wanting – it made sense, in a sick way, that he'd replace her with somebody who _wanted_ to be hurt.

"You know _what_?" Hastur reached out and grabbed the back of Crawly's neck, squeezing. "I think you and I ought to have a private discussion, one that won't offend the sensitivities of the new duchess of Hell, don't you? We'll have it in my study – I'll even invite Ligur to join us."

* * *

Aziraphale fixed Bithiah a cup of tea and laid out some biscuits, cherries, strawberries, small cakes, sourdough bread, and half a watermelon.

Gratefully, she took a reasonable helping of these offerings, gathered the treats up in the folds of her garment, and began walking towards the bed – which she'd apologized for taking from Aziraphale, though he told her to think nothing of it, since he didn't sleep and only had it for the look of the thing.

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Aziraphale snapped his fingers at her. "Where are you going?"

"To eat."

"In the _sleeping quarters_? Oh, _no_. No, I think not – not unless you've taken sick." He looked concerned for a moment. "You aren't feeling ill, are you? Because I'm sure I could–"

"No, I'm not ill." She blinked at the angel. "But I can't–"

"Sit down and take a civilized meal with your host?" Aziraphale quirked a pale eyebrow. " _Do_ sit down." He gestured impatiently at the seat opposite his own. "You'll get crumbs all over the bedspread."

She'd gotten so used to eating in her sitting room or her bedroom. Reclining or sitting at a table had always meant being within Hastur's reach. Very little actual eating occurred during _those_ meals.

With unease she knew was foolish yet couldn't help, she sat down stiffly.

She placed the food she'd had in the folds of her garment back onto a plate and began bringing berries to her mouth.

Aziraphale cleared his throat pointedly. "Aren't you forgetting something, young lady?"

"Thank you, good angel," she mumbled.

"Isn't there somebody _else_ you ought to thank before you start eating?"

Bithiah was mystified. She _stared_.

"Oh, good lord." Rolling his eyes, Aziraphale pressed his hands together as if he were praying, mouthing, " _God_ ," at her.

" _Oh_."

* * *

Grinning ear-to-ear, Ligur and Hastur left Hastur's study as Crawly rolled out from under the table, clutching his side, bruised and spitting up blood. They hadn't won, but they'd still enjoyed themselves immensely.

Crawly thought one of his ribs might be broken, but he was smiling a satisfied crimson grin of his own.

Because he hadn't told them where Bithiah was.

And they would never suspect Aziraphale's dwelling on their own – not in a thousand years.

* * *

" _Aziraphale_ ," said the Metatron's floating head, looking stern, "this is highly irregular. A strange woman living with you? Think how that looks, given what the demons have been doing..."

"But I'm guiding her to the light," Aziraphale protested, spreading out his exquisitely clean hands. "She's lived with demons for so long... And before that...who can say...? Practically a heathen, at any rate. Doesn't know any better." A warm, giving smile spread across his beaming face. "I believe, with proper care and attention, the poor soul might even see reason and come to join the other eight in the ark–"

The Metatron sighed heavily. "It is an admirable goal, Aziraphale, and Heaven applauds your dedication to humankind's salvation, but is it truly _wise_ to waste precious angelic time and energy on a plan that is ultimately doomed to failure?"

Rather offended, Aziraphale blinked into the glowing blue light, his own glow lessening. "But... But I _won't_ fail."

The Metatron was judgementally silent – looking at him wearily for a long moment – and then he vanished.

Something soft pattered against the window. It was only light rain, more drizzle than anything else, but its timing set Aziraphale on edge.

Feeling very, very old, he saw down gloomily by the fire, and poked at it miserably – thinking of Bithiah and Crawly and the countless others who wouldn't listen to Noah, who foolishly cheered on demon-human marriages and Nephilim-led raids from the sidelines – wondering why they had be such _idiots_ and go and choose the wrong side in the first place.

When it wasn't _that_ hard to be good, not really. Not nearly as hard as they made it out to be. And it was much less painful in the long run.

Perhaps, he concluded darkly, putting his hands over his face, they simply _liked_ breaking his heart.


	5. Part 5 of 6

_The Book of Bithiah_

A _Good Omens_ fanfiction

Part **5** of **6**

_Mesopotamia, 3009 B.C._

Bithiah was sewing. She wasn't _meant_ to be sewing – Aziraphale would never have dreamed of putting a guest to work in his house – but when had that ever stopped her before?

Her hands shook less the more she managed to concentrate her whole mind – and by extension _body_ – on what she was doing, rather than think back on her expulsion from Hastur's household, or how worried she was about Crawly, who neither she nor Aziraphale had heard from since he brought her here four nights ago.

The sewing itself was nothing strenuous; simple mending and embellishing (since Bithiah was the sort of person who cannot leave well enough alone, and tended, despite her overall good fashion sense, to be rather like Aziraphale when it came to fixations on certain patterns or designs – currently she had a passionate love of bunched sleeves with a crushed look to them, sewn over with pale, shimmering thread to form neat rows of rhombuses). Aziraphale had torn a sleeve of his favourite garment and – despite knowing he could miracle it away – lamented this unfortunate turn of events, unthinkingly, in front of Bithiah. She, of course, _insisted_ – with a force the angel was ill-prepared to reckon with – he let her mend and alter it.

Despite the pattern being different, Aziraphale quietly observed that the work she was doing on the sleeves matched several garments Crawly had turned up in over the years.

"Who taught you to sew?" he asked curiously, approaching the bed where she was perched, working peacefully.

"My father – _his_ father was a tailor, before the business went under, and he was very skilled when he wasn't drinking."

"And your mother?"

Bithiah wouldn't say, and he let it go.

"Ah, I see."

"I thought angels were meant to know everything," Bithiah remarked, lifting her hand to reach for a knife to cut the end of the thread she was holding, and finding herself being handed one by Aziraphale with no prompting. " _Oh_. Thank you."

"My goodness, _no_ , not _everything_ – only God knows _everything_." He paused, then added, "Besides, demons were angels once – I don't suppose you thought Duke Hastur knew everything."

She chuckled in dark agreement, setting down her needle for a moment and rubbing her hands together. "What was he _like_? As an angel, I mean."

"I never met him," Aziraphale pulled up a chair next to the bedside and eased down into it.

"You don't all know each other?" She sounded surprised.

"If you could see all the serried ranks of us, all lined up for an important occasion," sighed Aziraphale, "as far as the mind can follow and beyond even that, perhaps you'd understand better. And there were even _more_ of us before the demons fell, naturally."

"I just..." she murmured. "I can't even _imagine_ Hastur as an angel."

"Crawly might have known him," he suggested. "Have you ever thought of asking him about it?"

"He never speaks of before he was a demon," she said. "Crawly simply doesn't talk about Heaven – or angels – at all. Except for _you_ , sometimes."

"Oh." Aziraphale looked rather flattered. "All good I hope?"

"Of course." She smiled. "Anyway, he explained about seconds – about Ligur and Hastur – because I asked, but he's never said anything else."

"Ah," said the angel. "I see."

They sat in silence for a while. Bithiah resumed her sewing, starting on the second sleeve so it would match the first she'd mended and reshaped, and after a bit longer Aziraphale took out a crinkled, worn, heavily-textured bundle of papyrus and began perusing its contents with a low, enraptured hum.

"If it's not a private correspondence, could you read it aloud?" Bithiah requested, hoping for a story.

Aziraphale came back to himself in a muddled manner, blinking as if he'd forgotten she was even there, then registered what she'd asked, and nodded agreeably. Where was the harm?

Clearing his throat, the angel read, " _Lo! The Almighty cometh with ten thousand angels, to execute judgement against all – yea, to convict all the ungodly concerning their ungodly deeds which they did in an ungodly way, and concerning all the shocking things that ungodly sinners spoke against him._ "

It was a powerful sentiment, and Aziraphale read it very movingly. Bithiah was enraptured. "Did... Did an angel write that?"

He shook his head. "A human, actually – divinely inspired, of course."

"No!"

"Oh, yes, _Enoch_ – nice fellow."

"Enoch," she repeated. "I've heard that name before."

"Quite possibly," Aziraphale told her. "Noah is from his line."

"He died or something," Bithiah strained to recall, drumming her fingers against the bedpost pensively. "Young. But they couldn't find the body."

"God took him," the angel explained, "before his natural time."

"Isn't that a bit cruel?"

" _Cruel_? No! No, I imagine he was _quite_ at the end of his strength, poor man." The principality's gentle face twisted with pity, with remembering. "He saw too much in his short life, far too much."

"But to _go_ ," Bithiah said softly, shaking her head, "just like that... It must have been–"

"God was _good_ to him, Bithiah," Aziraphale assured her. "That fine fellow Enoch knew he had pleased the Almighty well; he was able to leave this world in peace, with his unfailing faith."

"He would be proud of Noah," Bithiah mused, "if he were here, wouldn't he?"

"Undoubtedly."

"All the good Noah's doing."

"Yes."

"I don't think _I've_ done many good things in my life." She didn't like to imagine what the writer of the words Aziraphale had just read would think of _her_.

Aziraphale's earnest face was filled with compassion. "It's never too late to _start_ , Bithiah."

* * *

_Early 3008 B.C._

As he nervously made his way through the – ever chaotic – marketplace, struggling to avoid the no-go stalls and booths which had sprung up over the past year, the ones the Nephilim tended to frequent and had more or less claimed full ownership of, Aziraphale kept an eye out for Crawly.

In truth, he was becoming increasingly worried about him. The principality had expected Crawly would turn up to check on Bithiah, but he hadn't; not _once_ since he'd left her at Aziraphale's dwelling.

Crawly hadn't turned up _anywhere_ – it was as if the demon had vanished off the face of the earth.

Once or twice, Aziraphale had gathered his – admittedly somewhat wavering – courage and flown far closer to Hastur's house than was advisable, hoping to catch a glimpse of Crawly, or at least to find some evidence he hadn't been discorporated or sent back to Hell in retaliation for protecting Bithiah.

He found none.

Well, none to speak of.

Nothing tangible, nothing concrete.

He _did_ , while flying overhead, see a hand pressing itself against the pane of an upper window, leaving an impression on the glass, and – for a hopeful moment – believed it was Crawly's hand, that he was in there, and somehow knew despite his caution that Aziraphale was out there, only it quickly occurred to him how it could have been _anybody's_ hand. Crawly didn't have a monopoly on long fingers. And it had been over in a flash. The fading murky print told him nothing either – the angel was too far away to study it at any length before it, too, was gone. So, naturally, it could have been a servant. A servant who hadn't seen – or suspected – the presence of Aziraphale at all. Just a bored servant, touching the window.

Now, whenever he was out and about, the principality kept his eyes peeled for any signs of the missing serpent of Eden. Although, he had to admit, repeated disappointment was making him rather lax. Bithiah, too, it would seem. She used to ask him every day if he'd seen or heard from Crawly; now she just paused and looked at him once or twice a week, in a way that couldn't be mistaken for her asking for anything _else_ , and he would shake his head, and they'd both sigh and miserably begin whatever task next needed doing.

A group of demons and Nephilim were gathered around a chicken-seller's stall (what those lumbering, idiot giants and their horrible fathers wanted with those poor chickens, Aziraphale hoped never to learn, as he strongly suspected they didn't plan on eating them or keeping them for their eggs).

Giving them as wide a berth as he could manage, Aziraphale happened to glance up at exactly the right moment and catch a glimpse of flame-coloured hair.

" _Crawly_ ," he murmured, indescribably relieved at having found him at last, taking a step in that direction despite himself.

"Uncle, look, this bird's having a fit." It was Bithiah's son – not a voice Aziraphale would ever likely forget, not after his last unfortunate encounter with the oaf. "It keeps trying to peck at Beelzebub."

"Comes of trying to stuff it head-first into a wicker basket," replied Crawly, a raspy, tired edge to his voice.

There was a _crack_ – one of the giants had apparently broken its neck. "Well, no more squawking from that one."

Crawly glanced up, apparently spotting Aziraphale over the broad, wide shoulder of the nearest Nephilim as he hunched down to pick up the dead chicken.

A little pathetically, the principality waved.

The snaky yellow eyes which had – to a rather worrisome degree – looked dulled and uninterested, widened and began to dilate as if Crawly was rapidly losing his grip on keeping them as close in appearance to human eyes as possible.

He shook his head at the angel. The message was unmistakable. _Don't. Don't come any closer. Get out of here before they see you!_

His legs suddenly all pins and needles, Aziraphale stumbled backwards, apologized habitually – offhanded, and without much real feeling – to a lady carrying a tray of nuts and pomegranates he'd accidentally bumped, and dithered on whether or not he should leave the marketplace entirely.

Crawly didn't want him anywhere near the demons and Nephilim just now. Plainly, he was being watched, and it wasn't safe for either of them to interact here...

But he knew he shouldn't leave him when he'd only just found him again.

No, he knew he didn't _want_ to leave him when he'd only just found him again.

Crawly didn't look well – he was gaunt, even for a demon. And he was no longer wearing Bithiah's lovingly sewn garments; Aziraphale had come to recognise the style of the sleeves at first glance, now that he'd been seeing her work in action. No, Crawly was very obviously back to wearing whatever covering demons automatically made appear over themselves.

 _What_ , dear boy, fretted Aziraphale, anxiously pacing the stalls on the other side of the marketplace, could have prevented you from sending us the smallest sign you were all right?

The answer was obvious, when you gave it a minute.

He _wasn't_ all right.

Aziraphale wrung his hands, then dropped them – with vehement frustration – to his sides. "Oh, hang it all!"

You couldn't expect a chap to just...to just... He began, unsure when exactly he'd made up his mind (or if perhaps he was still dithering inwardly, even now), to walk back towards where he'd seen Crawly and the other demons and their hideous offspring.

A little child – a scrawny thing no higher than Aziraphale's knee – suddenly thrust a torn scrap of papyrus at his anxiously clenched fist.

"What's this?"

_Roasted barley booth._

Aziraphale turned it over to see if there was any writing on the back. There wasn't. Just a gratuitous water-stain – likely the reason the scrap was torn from whatever document it originally belonged to.

He knelt down before the kid, whose hand was stretched out, as if expecting something in return. "Child, who gave you this?"

The grimy-faced kid thrust their hand upward more emphatically, grunting.

Aziraphale was uncertain if the child _couldn't_ speak – suffering from some manner of illness affecting the voice, had never been taught to, or else was simply too young – or just had horrible manners.

When he pressed a coin into the child's palm and the ungrateful little urchin took off without even a nod in his direction, Aziraphale concluded it was probably the latter.

At first there was nobody to meet him at the roasted barley booth, so the angel decided to shop, hoping Crawly – if indeed it _was_ him who'd sent the message – would turn up once he didn't appear to be tensely anticipating him.

While he rummaged though his satchel to get more coins out for the purchase, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as something nudged his arm.

He began to turn.

"No!" hissed the serpent. " _Don't_ look at me – pretend you're talking to the barley ssseller."

The barley seller was near-blind, with notably filmy eyes, and was squinting intently in Aziraphale's direction, not because he was having an interesting conversation with him but because he was awaiting payment and the angel seemed to be taking too long to find his coin purse. Of course, any demons watching wouldn't immediately know that. The seller didn't seem to see the giant black snake at all. Perhaps to him it was nothing but a heavy, inky shadow, or a long black blur.

"What the _hell_ have you been playing at, Crawly?" blurted Aziraphale, dutifully keeping his eyes downcast, fixed on his satchel. "It's been _months_."

"I've been placed under house-arressst," he said. "Except for when Bithiah's ssson requestsss my company on an outing, like he did today, I can't leave Hastur's house. They want to know what I did with Bithiah."

"But doesn't Hastur have another wife now? Surely it's no concern of his–"

"Not any more. She's dead."

"That's terrible – what happened?"

"Ssshe wasss playing at cutting her wrists – mind you, ssshe wasn't allowed anything ssssharper than a ssspoon without Hassstur presssent, and I don't know _where_ ssshe got the damn knife from – and ssshe went in too deep. Ligur found her, after it was done, made me clean up the mess."

"So, Hastur wants Bithiah back then?"

" _No_ ," snarled Crawly – the shadow cast by his serpentine head bobbed angrily. "The bassstard just wantss to be ssssure ssshe's sssuffering, wherever ssshe is. I was sssupposed to be releasssed by the time a replassement attendant for Hastur'sss new wife arrived from Hell, now that she'sss dead, he'ss gotten Beelzebub to issue an official detained-in-place warrant – Hasstur wasssn't playing around, I'm _fucked_."

"Language, Crawly!" He resisted the urge to shoot the demon a reprimanding look. "Now, _think_ , there must be a _loophole_ – these Hellish contracts of yours always–"

"The damn thing isss airtight, I tell you," he hissed. "I've written to Sssatan, and unlesss he givess me a perssonal passs – overturning Beelzebub'ss original sentence – I'm Hastur's prisoner until this blasted flood takes off."

"My dear fellow–"

Something not nearly so far off as to be reassuring _crashed_. The Nephilim were helping themselves to something against a booth-holder's will.

"I have to go."

Aziraphale risked a glance and saw a cowed black snake slithering away, back towards the other side of the marketplace.

If the angel had been the sort to bite his fingernails, rather than the sort to keep them scrupulously neat, he'd have done so then.

* * *

For a while, Bithiah didn't leave Aziraphale's dwelling at all. Especially not after they learned what had become of Crawly for bringing her there against Hastur's orders. She was afraid of being spotted by other demons, her association with Aziraphale reported to Hastur, and Crawly's suffering winding up being for _nothing_. And while Aziraphale had similar misgivings, eventually he was forced to confront the fact that keeping Bithiah cooped up away from sunlight and other people wasn't a good thing. She couldn't live as she was forever.

So the next time Aziraphale went down to see how Noah's ark was coming along, he smuggled Bithiah out with him.

The few smatterings of remaining onlookers and jeerers were uninterested in Bithiah, seeming not to recognise her as the former duchess of Hell, but Japheth's wife knew her at once and ran to her with open arms.

She'd heard, it would appear, about Hastur discarding her old friend.

Bithiah clung to her. "You were right," she whispered. "About all of it."

"What's done is done, Bithiah." She rubbed the middle of her friend's back gently, guiding her towards the rest of the family. "Come on, love, you can help us women clean the tools and we'll talk."

Aziraphale smiled contentedly at the warm reunion, glad to see they were on good terms again, that _something_ nice had come out of this.

* * *

_3007 B.C._

Crawly sat, cross-legged like a child, on the floor of what had been Bithiah's sitting room but was now smaller and devoid of any furnishings, of all the old familiar comforts.

It was his prison now, but it was also his refuge from the rest of the household's doings.

Which was for the best. The less Hastur saw of him, the less the duke of Hell felt the need to corner him and turn every interaction into yet another fruitless interrogation.

Crawly had gotten off easy that first time in Hastur's study, with what they considered a simple beating (no more than they'd have done to a mortal in his place), and Hastur and Ligur both liked to make sure he was aware of it. That they could, and _would_ , do worse if ever he gave them the opportunity.

So he did his best not to.

There was only one decoration in the room now: Bithiah's old wall-hanging, which he'd replaced on the wall after her knife-happy successor accidentally killed herself.

Something hit the windowpane with a _splat_.

Crawly almost didn't look up. A raindrop was nothing to get excited about. He'd better just get used to _those_. There were going to be a lot more where that came from, with the Great Flood on the horizon.

But a tangy, metallic scent tickled his nose hairs. So the demon lifted his head and _sniffed_.

His eyes focused on the window; it was speckled with red.

It wasn't raining water.

It was raining _blood_.

* * *

Although what Crawly would have _liked_ to do was lift his arm and make a rude gesture at Hastur's window as he left – reluctantly given leave by the devil, who deemed Beelzebub's ruling standard, and not in the least excessive, yet also wanted his best tempter out and about again, where he'd be making himself _useful_ , doing something _other_ than catering to Duke Hastur's every whim – but then decided on something that would be safer for his future well-being and more infuriating for the duke of Hell.

He waved and _smiled_ , all teeth.

" _Bye_ , everybody!" he called dramatically over his shoulder, flinging his arm up into another empathic wave, flamboyantly doing everything short of literally blowing kisses. "I won't forget to write! If you're ever in Australia, look me up!"

Ligur and Hastur watched, squat-faced and utterly unamused, from the behind the blood-smeared glass.

"We're sending somebody to follow him, right?" Ligur demanded.

"Oh, _yes_ ," snapped Hastur, his furious eyes currently a shade of darkness not otherwise seen outside of black holes in the furthest reaches of the universe. "I've got somebody tailing the flash bastard."

"You really think he's going to Australia?"

"No bloody _chance_."

* * *

The demon stretched his arms until they cracked delightfully, popping in and out of place. He carried nothing with him but Bithiah's wall-hanging. Anything else he happened to need, he'd resolved to pick up somewhere along the way.

Nothing held him back.

A cool breeze was pushing back his hair, and this – coupled with the fact that he was free, _finally –_ felt so unspeakably _good_.

Free, at _last_...

It was bliss.

No, it was stronger than that.

To call this feeling _bliss_ was akin to describing the Garden of Eden as 'pretty'. The word – along with its usual synonyms – didn't go nearly far enough.

It was _ineffable_.

He threw back his head and laughed.

Crawly continued to enjoy his walk down the tranquil roadway immensely until – much to his astonishment – he had to throw himself out of the way to avoid being trampled by a pair of high-jumping kangaroos who seemed rather in a hurry.

Which wouldn't have been odd, if he really _were_ in Australia instead of less than five miles from Hastur's house.

"That's..." Crawly mused, brow furrowed. "...er... _unexpected_..."

The smaller of the kangaroos, the female, stopped and looked at him, twitching her nose.

" _Wot_?"

She took off again, after the male, who was getting rather far ahead of her.

Then seven rams came charging through, baaing loudly as the stomped along the path, in every bit as much of a hurry as the kangaroos had been.

"Wot–" began Crawly, again, as the skies overhead darkened, filled with more birds than he'd ever seen in his life – white ones, black ones, big ones, small ones, ones with dull feathers, ones with plumage so bright they seemed to _shine_...

Then there were two camels, which wasn't usual for the area, except that they had no riders or packs. Not to mention they were accompanied on the road by a pair of _giraffes_.

A white dove fell from the sky, its abandoned companion chirping in dismay overhead as it plummeted, landing with a cruel smack against the side of the road at Crawly's feet.

The demon looked both ways. He saw no one. Shrugging, he picked the drooping dove up and hastily breathed life back into it. The dove blinked at Crawly, its rolled-back eyes sliding into place again as they focused. Then it cooed appreciatively before taking off and rejoining its ecstatic mate in the sky.

* * *

It wasn't as though all of the animals were arriving at once, Aziraphale pondered, privately admiring God's impeccable sense of order regarding the matter, but they _were_ arriving in large and varied enough groups to keep Noah and his family (along with Bithiah, who was doing her best to help) on their toes – _that_ much was certain.

Poor Bithiah wasn't very good with animals. She liked the birds and the turtles all right, but anything bigger seemed to disagree with her best methods and efforts. She'd gotten herself dragged through the mud by rather an ill-tempered donkey. Shem then had to trade with her, letting her hold onto a unicorn (for a male and a female of this rare, noble creature had indeed miraculously turned up together sometime around dawn) and taking the donkey in hand himself.

The unicorn (male, Aziraphale _thought_ , because the head was bigger than its mate's, but not actually _sure_ ) was reasonably well-behaved, especially compared to the donkey, but Bithiah was still holding onto it awkwardly and – should it make up its mind to run for it – her scrambling intervention wouldn't do much to prevent it.

They looked rather lovely standing there, though, if one ignored the strained look on Bithiah's face which plainly showed how little she was enjoying this.

The unicorn's horn shimmered in the light; it was nearly the same colour as the silver streaks in between the more youthful strands of almost-black in Bithiah's hair.

A voice behind Aziraphale suddenly said, "What's all this about? I was almost run over by a kangaroo on the road. Is Noah turning his life-saving ark into a travelling zoo? Change of plans on the whole wiping out the human race thingie?"

" _Crawly_!" The angel struggled to restrain his excitement, pressing his arms to his sides to avoid spreading them open. He cleared his throat twice in quick succession. "That is, _ah_. A- _hem_. Crawly. Good. Glad you've finally got away from Hastur." He permitted an arm to go up and pumped his fist. "Jolly good job, old bean."

Chuckling, Crawly rolled his eyes. "Yes, hello, Aziraphale – now, about the _animals_."

"Well, honestly, Crawly, what did you _expect_?" he scoffed. "Of course the Almighty is going to save the animals – they've done nothing wrong."

"Hmm, I noticed there's a lot less than _eight_ of each of _them_ – God playing favourites again?"

"Crawly!" He half expected the demon to get struck by holy lightning. " _Enough_."

"Right, well, good luck with the hippopotamuses." Crawly paused, frowning, carefully draping Bithiah's wall-hanging over the nearest fence-post and folding his arms across his chest. "Hippopotam _oo_ ses? How the bloody'ell d'you say the plural of that?"

Aziraphale pursed his lips. "Hippopotami."

"Bloody great fatsos," Crawly offered.

"You're incorrigible," sighed the angel.

"Oi, _Bithiah_!" cried Crawly, suddenly spotting her, reaching out and pointing emphatically. "That unicorn is going to make a run for it, if" –he winced– "you don't tighten your grip."

There was a silvery white streak across the field, followed by a victorious _neigh_ , and – just like that – the unicorn was gone and Bithiah was flat on her backside on the ground.

Crawly ran over to help her, Aziraphale not far behind him.

" _Bithiah_!" protested Shem, dismayed at the loss of the unicorn.

Holding onto Bithiah's arms as he lifted her back onto her feet, Crawly looked over his shoulder and huffed, "You've still got _one_ of them!"

Bithiah smiled at Crawly. "It's so good to see you again."

He opened his mouth to say something in kind back, only for the last voice in all of creation he wanted to hear right then to cut in with, "What the Heaven do you think you're doing?"

Bithiah tensed and pressed herself closer to Crawly, who still held onto her arms.

Shem stepped in front of them both protectively, holding up a hatchet.

Aziraphale was almost afraid to turn around – he guessed it, _knew_ it really, before he let himself see them: Hastur and Bithiah's son, along with Hastur's other two brutish sons and two of Ligur's ugly daughters.

"So, this is Australia, is it?" growled Hastur.

"I was following the kangaroos," Crawly said, with forced airiness. "Figured that's where they were going." His eyes dilated rapidly as his shoulders raised into a rankled shrug. "Guess not."

"Mother, what are you _doing_ with these people?" demanded Bithiah's son, looking even more furious than his father.

Bithiah pulled herself out of Crawly's grasp, despite the fact that he tightened his grip to prevent her and – the way Aziraphale saw it, shuddering – nearly hurt her quite badly by accident, in his desperation, twisting her wrist about the wrong way.

She stepped around Shem and held out her hands to her son. "My love–"

"You will _not_ embarrass me like this." He grabbed her wrist and _pulled_. If he'd been normal-sized it would have hurt; with the enormous size he was, it wrenched her wrist from its proper place. There was an audible, sickening _pop_.

"She's your _mother_ ," screeched Crowley, his shocked voice coming out at an unnaturally high pitch.

"Stay out of this, uncle."

"Now, really, you mustn't–" began Aziraphale.

" _You_ again," snarled Bithiah's son, still not letting her go, tightening his grip until he heard a _crunch_.

"Yes," sighed the angel, irritably. "Me." His eyes darted to Bithiah's arm. "You're _hurting_ her. Stop it at once. Let her go."

Growling, he thrust her onto the hard ground, where she landed on her side.

Shem and Aziraphale were immediately lifting her up and fussing over her.

"There, dear, no bones broken." It was a fact; her damaged wrist healed as soon as the angel said it.

"I'm all right," she croaked out, in a tone which implied exactly the opposite, numbly shaking off the angel's touch. There were tears streaming down her dust-smeared face.

"What did I _tell_ you?" Hastur looked scornfully at Bithiah, then meaningfully, darkly at their son. "She's worthless, traitorous. Like all mortal women. We – you and I – are something so much better."

"You're half _hers_ ," exclaimed Aziraphale, noting the Nephilim's cruelly dismissive facial expression as he inched backwards, closer to Hastur and his half-siblings. One of Ligur's daughters held out her hand to him and he took it, turning to go with her, not even sparing so much as a second glance for his wounded mother.

"No," murmured Crawly, probably as much to himself as to the angel. "There's _nothing_ of her in him."

You couldn't even call it, the angel realised, rather sadly, nature verses nurture, because even Heaven would have to admit – for all her faults – Bithiah did her best with the child. There should have been a chance that he'd turn out good – he shouldn't have been evil of himself (his father _had_ been an angel, once, hard as that was to believe) – and yet – cruelly – somehow there wasn't.

Hastur left then, but Aziraphale knew they hadn't heard the last of him. He'd never forgive Bithiah for this, or Crawly. Much less let them off so easy.

The demon and the former duchess of Hell didn't seem to be worrying about that right then, however. They were lost in their own private pain. Something only the two of them shared.

Crawly had an arm around her while she wept, turning and burying her face into his chest.

"How," she gasped out between sobs, "can he speak like that to a mother who loves him so much better than she's ever loved herself?"

"I'm so sorry," Crawly told her.

"I don't have _anyone_ ," she sniffled.

Aziraphale waited for the demon to contradict her, to point out that she wasn't alone – that she'd always have the two of them.

And then he realised why Crawly said no such thing. Why, instead of saying _anything_ , he just unfolded his wings and wrapped them around her.

They _couldn't_ promise that. Not forever. Hell could take Crawly away with a word, and the flood was nearing, which would mean Aziraphale would need to return to Heaven...

Bithiah had Noah's family, of course, and they were kind to her, but they weren't _hers_.

Bithiah was caught between two worlds – two lives – neither of which could suit her, much less sustain her.

Aziraphale thought she and Crawly were very likely the loneliest creatures he'd ever seen, but she – poor, ageing mortal, only momentarily sheltered by an insubstantial wall of dark feathers – was undeniably the lonelier of the pair.

* * *

_3004 B.C._

The last two years, give or take a few months, had been brutal.

For a couple of months, Hastur's malicious focus was on Bithiah, and while he never learned she was staying with Aziraphale (he concluded from their first encounter after casting her off, not unreasonably, that Noah's family were hiding her, undoubtedly under Crawly's easily deniable direction, and loathed the flash bastard all the more for being clever enough to arrange it), he still was loathe to leave off tormenting her.

Had she been destitute on the street, reduced to trading sexual favours for food, the duke of Hell might have relented – this would have contented him, since it would have upset Crawly, and that was all Hastur ever wanted from Bithiah. But it infuriated him to think that, instead, Crawly had the satisfaction of knowing not only was Bithiah out of his easy reach, no longer a summons away from being forced to endure whatever he felt like doing to her, but also – wherever she was living – reasonably comfortable.

What Hastur didn't fully understand, though, was turning her son against her was already the most violent stroke he'd ever inflicted upon the woman who had once been his young, beautiful bride.

Unlike everything else he'd done, the loss of knowing she had even the smallest degree of her son's love was a hurt she never healed from.

They say there is no hate as strong as that which starts out as love, and as Hastur had never loved Bithiah, his hate could never become the volatile, landmine of a thing their son's was.

Which perhaps was why, out of pure spite, he – and several other Nephilim – declared that the ark with all its space and animals and supplies was _theirs_. They thought they could claim it the way they did so much else. But, most likely, the thought would never have entered their dull heads (the Nephilim were _strong_ , not _bright_ ) without some raw, _personal_ hatred flowing through at least _one_ of them.

Hastur, fascinated and delighted by this claim, decided to help his and the other demons' children with their hostile takeover of what was meant to be God's saving grace for humanity and leave off _directly_ tormenting Bithiah for a while.

The help of their demonic fathers did, unfortunately, make them more of a force to be reckoned with. Nine persons, if they are very clever and diligent and have the high ground, can – in theory – hold off an attack that is pure physical force. If nothing else, they can barricade themselves, have a siege, keep up morale by calling it a holiday with animals, and wait it out. Of course, it doesn't hurt if they've got an angel on their side, giving suggestions. An angel who _might_ have been – though he wouldn't actually _say_ – tipped off by a certain former serpent of Eden in time to warn them.

Things get a bit steeper, start approaching the perpendicular, when real-as-corn demons who _aren't_ sharing information with the only possible informant you've got join in.

That's when you're playing with the big boys in more than just a physical sense.

But what demons – and those who side with them – don't take into account is the simple fact that God does everything for a reason. If God chooses to rescue eight persons, decides to reward them for staying true in a world of darkness as it draws to an end, and something – or someone – gets in the way of that, they're metaphorically poking at God's eyeball.

You can only poke someone in the eye so long before they retaliate.

There was a most remarkable hail; glittering stones like fist-sized fire opals fell from the sky and struck at the Nephilim and their fathers, as well as the human mob that joined them, but did not hurt the structure of the ark.

The earth shook under the feet of the demons, and several of them retreated to Hell early. Two Nephilim were killed (neither were Bithiah's son, or either of Hastur's other boys, but Ligur lost one of his daughters) and Noah's family got to see the pair of their would-have-been attackers dead on the ground, each with a shimmering pebble of a thousand different colours embedded in their huge foreheads.

Through it all, Bithiah had continued to help with the ark (though there was nothing left to do on a structural basis at this point) and the animals, and Aziraphale grew fairly convinced she'd join them, when the time for the flood came. The only thing Bithiah would not do was preach. Even with Shem and Ham on either side of her protectively, she was still afraid to be in public with them in view of the demons and Nephilim.

"They already _know_ ," she'd said stubbornly. "Everyone's already heard about what's going to happen. It doesn't matter."

Jepheth's wife tried to tell her that wasn't the _point_ , and she did go out with them in the marketplace _once_ , but never again after that.

She never said, but Aziraphale suspected her fear might not have been entirely unfounded or built on hypotheticals; there had been a few worrisome minutes when they'd been unable to find Bithiah, when the crowds had separated them.

When she was discovered again, she'd been crying and there was a long tear on the sleeve of her garment; she wouldn't speak of wherever she'd been.

Had her son pulled her aside and spoken sharply to her? Had he pulled her arm and torn her garment by mistake in the process?

 _Hastur_ had been spotted in the marketplace that same day, and was also unaccounted for during the time she'd gone missing – and that could have been more than just a nasty coincidence.

If such had been the case, the duke of Hell would've done a great deal more than merely have a few unkind _words_ with her, and Aziraphale thought the Almighty could forgive Bithiah for not wanting to put herself in a position for it to happen again.

So it puzzled the principality when he got no word of commendation from his side, almost as if – even then, after everything – they still believed he had failed, that she wouldn't be inside when God closed the door of the ark.

But on the day it was all meant to happen, Aziraphale went over to the bed to wake Bithiah and found a only a plumped up pillow under the coverlet. He searched the small dwelling for her (a quick work, made in vain) and found nothing to suggest she had ever been there apart from the two new garments, one black and one white, each with her trademark beautiful sleeves, draped over one of Aziraphale's chairs.

It was obvious from the colours and sizes that she'd made one for him and one for Crawly, and then – when they were completed – she'd gone.

There was no chance it was a mistake, that she'd left against her will and needed rescuing. This was a _choice_. A choice not to live through the end of the only world she knew.

Why she made that choice was anyone's guess. Fear of being alone, probably. Or even fear of her own son. He still hated her for helping Noah, for doing the right thing, and he blamed her for the loss of two of his Nephilim companions.

Maybe she even harboured a little guilt of her own over that. Perhaps she simply couldn't comprehend how soon it would all be over. How soon none of this would matter.

If she'd been a little bit younger, it might have been different, of course...

Except, despite the fact that she was obviously ageing by human standards, Aziraphale really couldn't see her as being so old as all _that._ He was an angel. To his mind, a being of only fifty-three years was jolly nearly still an infant, a little flower that had sprung up from the ground practically overnight.

Didn't she understand how much _more_ there was to life? How much there _could_ be?

His first thought, however, was not that he had failed, nor how much he would miss Bithiah. It wasn't even how sad he was for her, how _cold_ she must be – poor thing – wherever she'd run off to.

Those thoughts would come later, in Heaven, when he had plenty of time to look down at the waterlogged earth and think everything over.

No, his first thought – vocalized brokenly as he set the garment he'd picked up back over the chair – was, "What will I tell Crawly?"

This would, the angel was quite certain, break the demon's heart.

* * *

The rain had begun to fall in torrents and even though Aziraphale told Crawly it was already too late – God had shut the door and most of the other demons, with the exceptions of Hastur and Beelzebub, who were taking their sweet time, appeared to have already gone back to Hell – he still searched for her.

He searched in all the place he could possible imagine she'd go – including the familiar courtyard on Hastur's property, because why not?

He had to find her.

She was afraid of drowning.

She had always been afraid of water.

There was no more cruel way for her to leave this world and it wasn't _fair_.

" _Bithiah_!" called the demon through the driving rain, dragging his sinking ankles through the rising mud. "Where the Heaven are you, you bloody stupid–"

Something grabbed his arm and tried to spin him around – a difficult task, given he was more than a quarter sunk in the squelchy mud. "Crawly! You're not going to find her! You have to go back to Hell now or you'll wind up discorporated. Think... For pity's sake, think of the _paperwork_!"

He looked at Aziraphale – who also should have been gone by this point, up in Heaven, waiting it all out – and snarled, "I don't _care_ about paperwork right now, angel!" His yellow eyes flashed madly. "Go on, get out of here!"

The angel shook his head. "I won't go until you do."

"Someone will be looking for you."

"Gabriel already is."

"Then _go_! I'll take care of this. I'll find her."

The angel looked out at the rising waters, at the coagulating mud they were dropping lower and lower into, then up at Crawly's desperation-filled expression. "No."

"You _idiot_!" he shouted over the increasing noise of the storm whirling all around them. "Why are you doing this? Why do you even _care_ if I get back to Hell or not? What makes you _give_ a shit?"

"Because..." Aziraphale stammered. "Because..." He spread out his beautiful hands helplessly. "I don't _know_."

_You could be best friends, given half a chance._

It was in that moment Crawly realised Bithiah was right, and part of him hated her for it. How in blazes had she seen this? They were a demon and an angel, yet she'd looked at them and seen an angel and his second.

This mad, stupid girl who was scared of drowning yet chose to drown rather than to take the chance of living.

Crawly had never been so brokenly furious in his entire existence.

The principality suddenly gripped his thin shoulders and barked, "This isn't a reason for you to be angry with God, Crawly!"

He pulled away in a huff; Aziraphale seemed to understand, seemed able to read his mind in this vulnerable moment, which only made it _worse_ somehow. "I don't need a fucking _reason_!"

"Oh, Crawly..."

"I'll go..." he choked, turning away. "You win. I'll go to Hell – just get yourself out of here."

"How do I know you won't–"

"Would I lie to you?"

Aziraphale blinked. "Obviously. You're a demon, that's what you do."

"Same time, then?" Crawly offered, inhaling deeply and letting the rest go despite how much it hurt. "I go downwards, you go up, count of three."

The angel hesitated... Watching Crawly's darting eyes and twitching fingers, he _hesitated_.

The demon arched an eyebrow.

Then, slowly, water dripping into his already soaked through garment-collar, Aziraphale nodded his agreement. "One."

There was a flash of lightning overhead, momentarily turning the slate-black sky a vivid, electric _blue_.

" _Two_ ," rasped Crawly.

Thunder clapped, loud and angry.

Aziraphale jumped. "Three."


	6. Part 6 of 6

_The Book of Bithiah_

A _Good Omens_ fanfiction

Part **6** of **6**

_Mesopotamia, 3004 B.C._

"It's all right," said Bithiah's son, glancing over his shoulder at his older half-brothers' frightened faces in the gloomy light of the storm. "Father won't leave us." His eyes darted to Hastur and Beelzebub, who were a few feet away, clearing a spot on the high ground. "Course you won't." Hastur didn't respond, and the giant's deep voice wavered. "U-uncle Beelzebub?"

Hastur and Beelzebub began to sink into the earth, but not truly into the real, physical ground, not the way Crawly had begun to sink looking for Bithiah; _they_ were travelling downwards to Hell.

" _Father_!" The Nephilim was quick; in a flash he had snagged Hastur's wrist. "Father, no! Take me _with_ you."

The sky overhead lit up and shook like it was tearing itself into a thousand bright pieces, as if it were a mirror about to shatter and rain down shards amongst the water-drops.

Hastur, unwilling to be held in place even by his own son, jackknifed forward and – with an inhumane _growl_ – sank his teeth into the Nephilim's hand until he cried out in pain and had to let go.

Bithiah's son gawked at his blank-eyed demonic father, utterly horrified. It had been no play bite. Not like the harmless nip or two Uncle Crawly had taken at him while in his snaky form, usually as a joke.

No, Hastur's teeth had gone so far in they'd shredded of a layer of flesh and there was blood running down towards his oversized wrist.

Bithiah's son _wept_ , shamelessly.

Because Hastur, his beloved father, was gone, nothing but a pile of so much muddy, overturned soil left in the place where he'd been standing a moment ago – because Uncle Beelzebub was gone – because Uncle Ligur had already _been_ gone – because he didn't know where Uncle Crawly was – because it was raining and the water was getting higher and higher and they were, all of them, going to _drown_.

Because he wanted his _mother_.

The earth began to slide out from under his feet and that of his brothers. The mud ran down the side of the hill, faster and faster. His brothers were screaming.

Bithiah's son tumbled backwards. Something struck his temple, hard. He was wet, and cold. Water surrounded him. Water which was, briefly, stained with reddened ripples.

His brothers were close behind.

They were still screaming.

* * *

It wasn't until the water began to lap at her toes – and she remembered that she was on the highest hill she knew of – that Bithiah began to truly feel a little afraid.

For a woman who had been – nearly all her life – terrified of water, of drowning, she thought this delayed fear rather impressive and was a little put-out she had no one to share it with, that no one would ever know she'd had her _moment_ , a moment where that which frightened her most in this world meant _nothing_ to her.

And then that moment ended.

She panicked.

Choice or no choice, her heart was hammering almost as loud as the thunder – certainly she could hear it just as clearly. Her pulse thrummed in her ears, her chest ached as everything inside it went _thump_ , _thump_ , _thump_ , at a frantic rhythm a hummingbird would envy.

The rising wavelets at her feet were so dark and so unbearably _cold_.

Perhaps she had made a mistake after all.

There was a little nothing of a tree beside her; she lunged for it and began climbing though it barely held her weight and seemed to be vanishing under the flood waters just one step behind her as she ascended.

When there was no further to go, nothing but black and a thin line of purple lightning on the horizon, no voices, no cries, nothing but the rising waters, she took in the deepest breath she could.

Perhaps it would be her last. She shut her eyes and tried to think of something _nice_.

There was nothing in her childhood – a blur of stolen food and goods, of the basest poverty – save one or two serene moments where she'd been learning to sew and actually enjoyed herself for a fleeting second or two before something – anything – as it always did – went wrong.

Her early youth was just the same.

She'd made some friends, though. Other women. Jepheth's wife among them. _That_ was rather nice, while it lasted. She had rather missed female companionship during her years as duchess of Hell. Not being able to trust other females in Hastur's house had put something of what Crawly might call a damper on that whole concept, making it utterly impossible.

_Crawly._

She'd had Crawly, though. And Crawly was better than _thirty_ giggling girls as far as Bithiah was concerned. Even unable to protect her from Hastur, he'd always been on her side, through it all; she'd always known he understood her, just as she understood him.

Unlike her son, he'd never turned on her, never given up on her. Not once. Not even to save himself.

If asked, right then, what was the nicest thing about her life – about being alive – she knew she'd probably have said, very simply, "Crawly."

Aziraphale, too, of course – he'd been like her own guardian angel, in his way – but most especially, in a class of all his own that no other affection she'd ever known could remotely touch or come close to, _Crawly_.

Her memory was filled with him.

'Smile _. This is the fun part – we get to put on a_ show' – ' _Did you know there used to be a banana grove not far from where this house is?_ ' – ' _Don't thank me. But you don't_ forget _this, either, understand?_ ' – 'Congratulations _, Bithiah. You have a son._ ' – ' _I'm so sorry_.'

She wished she could see him one last time.

The water was to her clinched, weakening knees; she closed her eyes.

And then, inexplicably, everything around her stilled; the light behind her tightly scrunched eyelids _changed_.

Ever so slowly, she opened them and exhaled in amazement, gawking like a child seeing a boiled sweets booth at the marketplace for the first time.

It was so _welcoming_.

She was in a cosy structure of some sort, a dwelling filled with shelves and soft, warm light. Golden dust motes twirled in intricate ballets in several corners lit by shafts of peeking sunlight from outside.

Bithiah shivered. She was still cold. Colder than she'd ever been, despite the warmth of the place around her. Drops of water ran down her arms and legs and from her hair, dropping onto the bone-dry floor with an almost sacrilegious _drip-drip-drip_.

Something _tick-tick-tick_ ed.

The shelves she slowly padded past in pure wonderment were filled with odd, often gilded rectangular objects.

She halted at the sight of a tall, thin man seated in a plush, upholstered chair. He was looking down at whatever was on the desk in front of him.

For a moment, Bithiah wasn't _sure_.

The shape of the back, the lazy slumping way in which he sat, the red hair – though it was cropped very short, most of it _gone_ – was all about _right_ , yet he still seemed... _different_...somehow.

Like he wasn't really Crawly. Not Crawly as she knew him. Not _her_ Crawly.

Then she realised he was _crying_ , and none of that _mattered_.

She opened her mouth to say she was there, that she understood whatever it was; she was right here, she knew, she _knew_ –

A bell jiggled and another voice beat her to it.

" _Crowley_? Hello? Are you in here?"

Straightening up in a hurry, the man-shaped creature Bithiah had known as Crawly began wiping furiously at his eyes – he reached for a pair of spectacles with black lenses that had been on the desk beside whatever he was examining and was about to shove them onto his face just as the angel came into view.

His clothing – like Crawly's – was different, his hands were somehow more polished-looking in their gleaming neatness, but otherwise Bithiah thought him far less changed than Crawly when she saw him.

There _was_ a more natural sardonic impatience in his expression, like he'd been around humans a bit too long, but for the most part Aziraphale was the same soft angel he'd always been.

"Oh," he said softly. "My dear."

Crawly set down the spectacles, and Aziraphale put a hand on his shoulder. The demon made a little throat-clearing sound that might have been of protest at the affection but might also have a been a whimper or a light moan. He leaned his head sideways against the angel's reassuring hand.

"I know," said Aziraphale. "I _know_. I should have warned you. Should have mentioned that was in here."

Crawly's head lifted and he shook it. "It's been thousands of years, angel. You wouldn't have thought of it. I _just_ –"

Aziraphale's hand moved and rubbed the demon's back consolingly. "I know, dear boy, I know."

The demon's back relaxed and, almost as a naturally reflex, he let his wings out and allowed the angel to stroke them.

Bithiah took another step forward.

The pair started; Crawly pulled his wings back in and reached for the spectacles again.

Aziraphale pulled back his hand. "Who's there?"

IT IS MY PRESENSE THEY SENSE, NOT YOURS.

Bithiah turned.

A hooded figure in black – with open, widely sprawled, featherless wings of night that looked maybe a little like stars, maybe a little like something entirely else – was standing behind her.

The figure was evidentially carrying a very tall, very sharp scythe but, out of politeness, had leaned it against one of the shelves.

"I don't understand," she whispered, glancing back over her shoulder. "Are you saying they can neither see nor hear me?"

YOU ARE LONG GONE BY THIS POINT IN TIME. EVEN IF THEY COULD SEE YOU, YOUR FACE WOULD BE BLURRED IN THIER PERCEPTION. SUCH IS WHAT HAPPENS WITH OLD MEMORIES, ESPECIALLY THOSE HOUSED WITHIN THE MINDS OF IMMORTALS.

"I see," said Bithiah, though she didn't, not completely. "I _have_ to go with you now, don't I?"

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, the figure suggested, rather sagely. THINK OF IT AS TAKING A LITTLE REST AFTER A LIFETIME OF WORK.

And so she went with him, agreeably enough. Not as she would go with an old friend – that would have been too easy, too simple a conclusion to the life Bithiah had led. But she was not unwilling, and she was far less afraid than she'd been earlier, as well as grateful to have gotten her wish. She had seen Crawly – or what was left of him, whoever he was in this distant future which was shared only by his angelic second and could not include _her_ – one last time.

It was enough. Because it had to be.

There was a thunderclap.

She saw the flood waters again, back in the cold and the dark, felt the tree snap under her, felt her lungs fill.

And then the figure – who had removed his hood and was rather like a skeleton now – offered her his hand, which – after a moment's dithering hesitation – she accepted.

There was no more for her.

* * *

 _Hell, Main Offices, 3004 B.C. (also known – as_ all _years in Hell are – as the year 'Too Late')_

Crawly was sleeping at his desk. Or rather, he was leaning back in his chair with his eyes half closed. No demon with half a brain would actually let themselves fall asleep – whether or not they'd grown partial to slumber – in Hell.

You just couldn't be sure another demon wouldn't wander over and do something nasty to your unattended corporation.

The worst Crawly himself had ever done to another demon he'd come upon at their desk or slumped by the water-cooler in a state of incoherency was tie their wings together (well, they were _asking_ for it, really, having them out down here in the first place) and glue their feet to the already rather sticky floor. But most demons in Hell at that particular time – probably because of how long many of them had been up on earth – were more wont do a handful of things so awful, and with so much obvious dark delight that they came across more vilely _human_ than they did properly demonic.

The time would come, eventually, when they'd settle down again (with the exceptions of Hastur and Ligur) and overall not be – from Crawly's personal viewpoint, at least – not entirely evil through and through. Leastwise, not individually. They'd simply have gone back to doing their respective jobs because it was what they were _told_ to do, and not because it gave them any personal pleasure.

But that time was not now.

Still, with the drumming rain overhead, even _leaking through_ in some places, Crawly did indeed lean there in a position that – under other circumstances – might have suggested he was sleeping.

He was using Bithiah's wall-hanging, the one she'd wanted him to keep, as a blanket.

Kicking up his feet and pulling the nearest corner of the hanging towards his chin, he heard something crinkle lightly. He ignored it; it weighed little in the balance of echoing sounds around him – he gave the hanging another tug.

A number of stitches came loose.

He blessed under his breath, opened his yellow eyes all the way, bent forward, and examined the damage in the dirty, flickering light.

Catching sight of something unexpected, Crawly furrowed his brow and reached into the space between the main portion of the wall-hanging and its thicker backing.

There was some wool, for stuffing, but there was something _else_ , too.

Lifting what he – wrongly – suspected was only the first layer of wool, he discovered the entire inside of the hanging was actually lined with layers of papyrus.

All of which had writing on them.

Flashes of memory all seemed to simultaneously waggle themselves in front of Crawly – it was like they were saying, in a voice that sounded more like Bithiah's than his own, "Oh, Crawly, use your head for _once_ – do you _get_ it now?"

There she was, in his mind's eye – Bithiah, redoing the stitches on the hanging. Stitches _he'd_ thought should have held in the first place.

All those years she was keeping a diary of sorts. A record of everything that happened to her in Hastur's house. And, knowing – clever, clever girl – that Hastur would have any such writings destroyed if they were left where he could find them, she'd hidden them in the hanging. Also knowing she couldn't take them with her when she was dismissed, no more than she could take anything else, she'd left the hanging for Crawly – for _him_ to look after.

* * *

_One Lunar Year & Eleven Days Later..._

Aziraphale was relieved to be back on Earth again. He hadn't enjoyed spending the last year in Heaven, waiting for the flood to be over – then for the waters to recede.

Ever since his assignment at the Eastern Gate of Eden, Heaven had been feeling less and less like home. The other principalities didn't seem to understand this; they associated not feeling Heaven was home, leaving one's natural place, more with the depravity of the demons than they did Aziraphale's – truly innocent, if uncommonly passionate – love of the world below God had created. There had been nobody who he could really speak to about it. Nobody to turn to and say, "Dreadful shame, isn't it?" and motion with his hands spread out at the wide celestial windows, down towards the flooded land, with any hope of receiving more than a blank stare, or – in the case of Michael the archangel – a disdainful blink in return.

It really didn't help that Heaven had – though it rankled Aziraphale to admit it, even if it was only to himself – no taste to speak of, and not one single tavern where you could buy a hot meal.

No meals, either.

There wasn't any _food_.

But things were bound to be better now that it was over.

All the Nephilim were gone, for one thing; and the demons weren't likely to return in droves – more like a select few on assignment to cause mischief amongst humanity as it expanded.

Yes, _that_ would be much more manageable.

With a sigh, Aziraphale sat on the warm ground in a small, dappled splodge of shade under a tree, leaned his back against the truck, and stared up at the sky.

The Almighty's rainbow was still visible – and it was _magnificent_.

The angel loved all the _colours_ , the way they filled the sky, the way the light refracted through them, the way they sort of blended into one another if you squinted just so at the right moment...

How one simple thing in the sky could be so utterly beautiful...it was beyond words...

He smiled. It was _ineffable_.

It was so much _quieter_ down here than it had been a year ago. He thought he could almost _hear_ the land exhaling a breath, as if the very ground were relieved the wicked days were securely in the past (at least for the time being). You could almost feel the atmosphere _healing_ , turning everything fresh and new again.

There were _flowers_ – the angel could smell their lingering fragrances all around him, carried on the wind. Even as one who'd never been very interested in plant life, he had rather _missed_ flowers.

Something made a gurgling croak overhead and Aziraphale craned his neck to see what it was.

Noah's raven – the one, it was to be assumed, he'd sent out when he'd first suspected the waters were getting lower.

"Oh, so it's _you_ , is it?" said the angel, with a little indulgent smile playing around his lips. "What was all that business about not finding a place to land and then flittering up to the top of the ark when you returned, making it so poor old Noah couldn't send you out again? Eh? Not what you'd call amiable behaviour, I shouldn't think."

The raven cawed happily.

"Oh, yes? And what _are_ you so cheerful about?" Aziraphale glanced past the raven, at the rainbow again. "Well, I suppose it _is_ a beautiful day."

There was plenty of cheer in that alone. It had been a long time since there was a day like this one. No wonder Noah was off some place building an altar to thank God he was here to see it.

But it turned out the raven was happy because he had company arriving. A dove – very likely the one Noah had sent out after the raven decided to be cheeky and which had returned with a fresh olive leaf in its beak – came flying over and, with a companionable _coo_ , alighted beside the raven, nuzzling against its dark feathers.

The raven preened proudly and briefly nuzzled the dove back by way of greeting.

And then they just stayed there, together, looking content and natural and pure and as if – for right then – there was nothing else they could possibly want but to be near one another.

At first Aziraphale enjoyed looking at them, but then rather an awful feeling that might have been excessive loneliness began to overwhelm him. He couldn't have explained it if called upon to do so, but looking at the two birds – the one dark and the one light – he began to fell like something very dear to him was _missing_.

It was as if he should have been able to look to his side, as the dove could, and see – oh, _someone_ there.

Yes, someone ought to be there for him the way the raven was there for the dove.

It was as if, for that brief painful moment, Aziraphale was an amputee – he was like a one-armed man being made to stare at another fellow who had both his arms. It went beyond mere envy. It was _wrong_ , somehow. He wondered if this was anything like how demons felt if they happened to catch sight of an angel whose halo was showing.

"Lot of nonsense, really. I'm being silly," he murmured to himself, brushing away tears with the back of his hand as he stood up and began walking, uncertainly, towards the place where his dwelling had once been.

* * *

_The Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh, 1511 B.C._

"And we saw the Nephilim!"

Aziraphale rolled his eyes; he _highly_ doubted the twelve spies Moses sent to spy out the land of Canaan had seen hybrid half-demons that had been dead – all drowned by way of the ineffable plan – for over two centuries now.

But the camp of the Israelites was quickly building into a frantic panic, anyway.

"There were also the sons of Anak, the descendants of the Nephilim!"

"Angel, if I'm not mistaken weren't the Nephilim unable to _have_ any children?"

Aziraphale fought back a smile, struggling to hide his delight as he felt the presence at his side. He bit onto his lower lip forcefully, inhaled, and – finally – pushed out, through clenched teeth, in what he hoped was a stern, matter-of-fact tone, "I'm sorry, _what_ was that?"

"I _said_ ," and Crawly repeated himself.

"As far as I know."

"They'd have died anyway, even if–"

"I _know_ ," sighed Aziraphale, a little irritably.

"God sure didn't pick these people for their _brains_."

" _Crawly_!"

"No, no, no – I don't mean that in a bad way," he protested, backpedalling, trying to stay at least somewhat on the angel's good side. "I'm sure they've got lots of other fine qualities." People did, mostly. "They've got a big bunch of grapes there! Takes two men to carry it. Excellent farmers, see? Could start a market."

"Er..." Aziraphale flushed crimson. "The spies brought that back from Canaan."

"Oh, yes, I've heard about that place." The demon smacked his lips together with a pointed _pop_. "The land flowing with milk and honey."

"I'm sure they'll like it there," said Aziraphale, trying to sound chipper, "provided they get over their, er, irrational fear of dead giants."

"Or they could just form a lynch mob like they're doing now." Crawly pointed at the assembly who were now turning, quite viciously, on a pair of rather befuddled and innocent-looking men. "Why are they so upset at those two again?"

Aziraphale groaned. "That's Joshua and Caleb."

"Right. What did they _say_ that got the crowd all worked up?"

"Have faith in God."

"Yeah." He grimaced like a serpent with toothache. "That'll do it."

"This isn't going to _end_ well, I fear." Aziraphale wrung his hands. "All this murmuring is bound to make the Almighty tetchy."

"Yeah, probably, but – _well_ – they're already almost to Canaan – what's God going to do? Make them go around it in circles for four decades?"

The angel sighed heavily. "Did you _want_ something, Crawly?"

"I hear," said Crawly, in a wheedling tone, beginning to circle Aziraphale, "your boss has Moses putting together a number of scrolls – writing out history – including documentation of the days before the flood."

"Yes, that's right." His brow furrowed uncertainly, clearly puzzled by Crawly's interest in this.

" _I_ happen to have some writings from before the flood and I thought he might..."

Aziraphale's eyes widened; the demon had his undivided attention. "Who wrote them?"

The name seemed to catch in his throat, but he managed to say it. "Bithiah."

Aziraphale's smile went from politely interested and almost conspiratorial to a brittle, wet thing. In his own way, he missed her, too. "I didn't know she–"

"I doubt she meant for anyone to _guess_ – I think she had Hastur convinced she was nearly illiterate," Crawly admitted.

"And you?"

"Never thought to ask."

"Do you have these...documents...with you?"

He nodded. "I've been carrying them with me ever since..." His voice trailed off, ending in a sniff. "I was worried Hastur or some other demon would find them."

"Is the papyrus beginning to deteriorate?" Aziraphale asked gently, starting – he thought – to understand.

The demon nodded, a smidgen sheepishly.

"Come." Aziraphale reached for Crawly's wrist and – making sure no one was looking – began to pull him in the direction of an unused tent. "We'll look them over in private and see if there's anything to be done."

* * *

The sheaths of papyrus spread out before him, Aziraphale shook his head rather sadly. "Crawly, my dear... This... I _can't_ give Moses _this_."

Crawly sniffed and rolled back his shoulders. "Why not?"

"For one thing," he said dryly, "your Bithiah – fascinating and endearing woman though she was in life, God rest her soul – evidently had a writing style like that of an over enthusiastic blasphemer on Nitrous Oxide."

"Oh, come _on_. The woman was married to _Hastur_ ," snapped Crawly, rather offended; "cut her some slack. You'd be bitter, too, if you woke up to a duke of Hell's face every morning."

"She _chose_ to marry him, Crawly." He did not say this cruelly, with a sharpness meant to wound, but as a firm reminder as he placed one sheath on top of another, beginning to gather them all together again. "At least to some extent she knew what it entailed."

"How can you say that after reading what she wrote? What else was she _supposed_ to do?"

Portions of Bithiah's writing alluded to her first meeting with Hastur, and they lined up with Crawly had already known – her putting a knife to her own throat to stop Hastur from raping her, demanding he marry her instead – but it was somehow even worse told in her own words.

When it happened, she'd gone with some other young women down towards the banks of a stream. Being afraid of water, she'd stayed a ways off even when the others waded in. And that's when the duke of Hell had seen his chance and taken it. She'd been completely unprotected – not that her girlish companions would have been much use against a _demon_ – and Hastur had gotten a lot further along than he had let on to Crawly when he told him about it later; Bithiah did what she needed to do in order to survive.

"What Hastur did to her was terrible," Aziraphale sighed. "Just _terrible_. The poor girl. But it doesn't change the fact that she still wanted wealth, she still wanted that life. She knew perfectly well who he _was_ , Crawly. She knew he'd make her a duchess."

"If you say so."

"Anyway, this collection of works God's having Moses put together – it's not meant to go into the deep things of demons" – here Crowley snorted derisively, and Aziraphale ignored the interruption, pressing on – "there's too much information Bithiah shares here humans should never be privy to... Even if I offered it to Moses as a portion of research material it... It would be frowned upon by head office and – to be frank – _rightly so_."

"So that's it, then?" Crawly's eyes flashed. "Game over? Everything Bithiah did, everything she thought, everything she believed in, deserves to just be wiped out of existence?" His voice rose in pitch. "Just like _she_ was?"

" _Crawly_..."

"Be honest. D'you really think that, angel?"

"I don't like it any more than you do, but it's–" He shook his head again and – the full set of sheaths stacked together now, he made a motion to hand them back to the demon. "I _am_ sorry."

"But what'm I meant to do with this?" Crawly wouldn't take it. "I can't preserve it forever and I can't–"

Aziraphale softened. "You can't let it go, either." _You can't let_ her _go._

"Right." There were two reddening spots visible on the demon's cheeks which the angel was kind enough not to draw attention to.

Glancing with miserable wariness at the closed flap over the tent's entrance, Aziraphale grimaced and drew the sheaths back to himself. "Oh, for pity's sake! Don't _tell_ anyone, but I'll hold onto them for you – I can't guarantee that any miracle I can get away with will keep the papyrus from rotting in time, but I'll do my best. I don't like to see you so upset, but I can't give it to Moses – it's the only thing I can offer."

"Yeah," agreed Crawly, dejected but accepting. "Better off with you, anyway. Nobody would suspect you had it. And if... If it rots or disintegrates or whatever in your possession, don't... Don't tell me."

"I won't," promised the angel.

"Good, then."

"Yes," he said wistfully, his soft, clean fingers curling around the sheaths. "I suppose it is."

* * *

_London, Soho, 1996_

Crowley woke alone in Aziraphale's bookshop. He hadn't realised he'd dozed off. The angel must have popped out for something – maybe he needed to post a letter to one of the odd dozen or so persons who specialised in those books of prophesy he loved so much. Aziraphale rarely bothered to write anybody else, and he never sold and shipped a _book_ by the post – or at _all_ – if he could avoid it.

Slightly disoriented but not in the mood to sleep any longer, Crowley rose up from the couch, peeled away the knitted blanket Aziraphale must have placed over him before he left (he noted how the edges were affectionately tucked in under his feet, which he kicked free, rolling his eyes) and began looking for his sunglasses.

Locating them, he began to wander the shop, squinting lazily through the dust motes at the shelves and cabinets – including the climate-controlled one only Aziraphale knew how to open, which housed an original scroll in the handwriting of Saint John.

On a glass-fronted shelf, a thick book bound in black leather caught the demon's eye. He didn't usually peruse this particular shelf, on the rare occasions when he looked for something to read in Aziraphale's shop. There were no pictures in any of these, and Crowley – being slightly lazy and possessed of an unfortunate tendency to let his mind wander too much when he read – shared Alice's view of books without pictures or conversations despite the well-meaning angel constantly reminding him how limiting that was.

Furthermore, theses were all _Bibles_ down this way, more or less. Some with the apocrypha, some without. Some with rather hilarious typos and missing bits. But, still, Bibles nonetheless. _Hardly_ something a demon would choose to read at any great length during his free time in-between temptations.

But there was something about _this_ book...this _particular_ Bible...

Lifting the glass, he reached for the leather tome, and the expensive watch on his wrist did something quite _odd_.

It ticked back a full five minutes.

Crowley's watch had never done anything it wasn't meant to before – it never told the wrong time (for _any_ of the places whose hours it kept track of), never stopped ticking, never wound down, despite not being a wind-up, despite even the fact that the battery inside had rotted away.

He glared down at the watch and the minute hand – duly reprimanded – raced back to where it was _supposed_ to be.

There. Better.

His fingers made contact with the spine and drew the book out. Without knowing why, he took in a deep breath and held it for a moment as he opened it.

According to a faded – and slightly foxed – index, there were the usual sixty-six books, with one extra – a sixty-seventh – smack dab between Genesis and Exodus.

_The Book of Bithiah._

Unlike the rest of this Bible, the words were not in English – they were in a language Crowley hadn't had to bother with for a very, very long time. The meaning of those words, as well as their author, were not things Crowley had had any cause to think about for several centuries now.

Long, long ago, Bithiah's death left a wound on Crowley's life that hadn't healed and faded so much as scabbed over and subsequently been ignored.

He had – quite literally – been an entirely different person back then.

Her face, should he ever try to remember it, was a childish _blur_ – he knew it had been a pretty face, but in his mind it became _anyone's_ pretty face. A pretty face without specifics. There was nothing distinct about his memory. This happened, sometimes, when you were an immortal being. She was still in there, sincerely missed in some dark corner of his mind, but she was also weighed down by many other experiences that drowned her out – the irony of this did not escape him.

The memory of her – what was left of it – was more likely to bring a fleeting smile to his face than tears to his eyes, however, the smile was not a _happy_ one.

What caught the demon off-guard was he hadn't _expected_ to come across her words in Aziraphale's bookshop. He hadn't read them since he left them with Aziraphale – in a very different form – back in that tent in 1511 B.C... As far as he'd suspected, anything Bithiah ever had to say was long lost to the world. It had never occurred to him that Aziraphale preserved her words despite their blasphemous, uninspired nature. That the angel would have had them written out – perhaps many times, painstakingly – for them to turn up here – in proper binding, in an actual Bible – all these centuries later.

And as he read the first few lines, it was as if Bithiah was _there_.

As if in a daze, Crowley made his way to Aziraphale's desk, set the Bible down open on it, took off his dark sunglasses (which he placed, a little shakily, beside the Bible), and pulled back the upholstered chair, slowly sinking into the seat.

The tears came then, the sudden and unstoppable kind that are like a storm and make shoulders rattle involuntarily.

He did his best – at first – to dash them away but eventually forgot about trying to hold them back. What was the _point_?

The vellum was little more than a holding place for her fossilised words; she was here, if he could tear his eyes away from the painfully old-fashioned print, she'd be right behind him...somehow...

The bell over the door jingled ( _"_ Crowley _? Hello? Are you in here?"_ ) and Crowley snapped out of it in a hurry, frantic to get his sunglasses back on his face. He didn't want Aziraphale to see him like this.

He was not fast enough.

"Oh," said the angel, tenderly – seeing him, seeing the book. "My dear."

Crowley gave up, lowering the sunglasses as Aziraphale placed his hand on his shoulder.

He tried to think of something sardonic to say. Words failed him. A little strangled noise was all that came out. He cleared his throat, for all the good it did. He leaned his head sideways against the back of the angel's hand.

"I know. I _know_. I should have warned you. Should have mentioned that was in here."

Crowley lifted his head. "It's been thousands of years, angel. You wouldn't have thought of it. I _just_ –"

He felt the angel's warm, plump hand move downwards and begin to rub his back. "I know, dear boy, I know."

Trustingly, Crowley opened his wings and allowed the angel to stroke them – the friendly, gentle touch was reassuring.

Then there came, over them both, the immensely uncomfortable feeling they weren't alone.

They jumped.

Aziraphale hurriedly withdrew his hand from Crowley's wing feathers. "Who's there?"

Crowley snatched up his sunglasses.

No one answered, and the prickly feeling began to evaporate. It became less likely in their minds that either of their respective sides had arrived unexpectedly and seen them being affectionate towards one another.

"How," Crowley asked, after a long pause, "did you end up having it published and bound _anyway_? I thought you said what Bithiah wrote wasn't _for_ humans."

"Ah, well." Aziraphale smiled – a tiny, modest, rather shaky smile. "It wasn't easy. For a while I was just copying it down by hand and preserving the copies I made – they weren't... They weren't exactly in ideal shape when you first gave them to me, and papyrus doesn't last very long naturally." Not that he needed to explain that – Crowley understood it all too well, which was why he'd asked Aziraphale not to tell him when her words vanished forever. "Then, around, oh, let me think, when was it?" He snapped his lacquered fingers pensively. " _1652_?" He shook his head; it didn't matter. "Yes, sixteen-fifty-two sounds about right." Then, "They – that is, Bilton and Scaggs – were hanging proof sheets outside for public viewing – one could sneak just about anything in there."

Crowley stared.

"I had to test it out first, of course, start small." The angel's eyes strayed to his prized _Buggre Alle This Bible_.

"No." Crowley couldn't believe it. "You're telling me the reason you dropped those extra verses into the book of Genesis in _The Buggre Alle This Bible_ was so you could–"

Aziraphale sucked in his lips. "Mmm-hmm."

"And so you knew it was possible for a whole print run of such a mistake to be..."

" _Destroyed_?" He nodded. "Oh, yes. And I saw to it I had the only remaining copy for my Bible collection. That was when I knew it was safe enough."

If it would work with a few extra verses in a Bible already riddled with bizarre and unabashedly lengthy compositor's errors, it would work with Bithiah's writings.

"You still took a big risk," mulled Crowley, unable to fully process this. "After everything you said."

"Well, honestly, my dear, it isn't as if it were in _English_ – no one could have possibly _understood_ what they were reading even if they caught a glimpse of the altered proof sheets."

"What I don't understand is why you would do this for a dead woman you only knew because–"

"Oh, _Crowley_ ," sighed Aziraphale, his tone gentle but also slightly put out. "I didn't do it for her. I did it for _you_. I know she meant a lot to you."

The demon struggled against fresh tears, more relevant – and thus more embarrassing – than the ones he'd cried earlier. He thought his sunglasses were hiding most of them, and that was why he kept himself from turning away or leaving out of sheer mortification, but Aziraphale saw them all the same.

The angel reached out his hand again and patted Crowley on the cheek, tactful enough not to comment on the fact that it was damp. "She was a good girl."

Crowley leaned his cheekbone against Aziraphale's thumb. He could have agreed, or said something else, but it was plain to both of them that there was no need for that. This was the mourning – the goodbye – they'd been denied all those centuries ago when they'd parted ways in the driving rain – one to Hell, the other to Heaven.

For this brief moment, which would soon be over and never again mentioned, they could miss her together – they could mourn her loss and lament her choice.

By lunchtime, the Bible would be back on the shelf, largely forgotten, and they'd have other things to think about.

But for right then, they had this.

For right then, there was nothing else they could possibly want but to be near one another.

_Fin_


End file.
